The CDU in the Hamburg Parliament also wants to hear Chancellor Minister Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD) before the committee of inquiry on the "Cum-Ex" scandal.

"In order to bring the truth to light," the former head of the Hamburg Senate Chancellery and close confidant of Olaf Scholz, must be invited to the committee as a witness, said the spokesman for the citizenship faction in the committee, Götz Wiese, on Friday of the German Press Agency .

The CDU parliamentary group will apply for this in a timely manner.

Chancellor Scholz is scheduled to testify before the committee for a second time next Friday.

At the same time, a report by the news magazine "Spiegel" revealed that the Cologne public prosecutor's office had already handed over explosive documents to the Hamburg Parliament at the end of June.

Accordingly, these investigation results support the suspicion that Scholz, as the first mayor of the Hanseatic city in autumn 2016, ensured that private bank MM Warburg was spared by the Hamburg tax authorities despite criminal stock transactions and unjustly collected tax refunds.

It is about the content of the mail inboxes and "conspicuous gaps" in the digital calendars of the Hamburg tax authorities and Scholz.

The spokesman for the Federal Chancellor said on request that they did not know "the quoted assumptions of the Cologne public prosecutor" and therefore could not comment.

Notice of targeted deletions

A "comparison of e-mail communication with the calendar entries in the official mailboxes", as quoted by the "Spiegel" from the investigations of the prosecutors, shows a "conspicuous imbalance in the use of keywords such as cum/ex or MM Warburg".

While in the period before 2020 "hardly any emails on the topics of Cum/EX or Warburg can be found, numerous references were found in the calendar entries in the Outlook mailboxes." From this, the investigators draw the conclusion: "This indicates a targeted deletion of the Topics Cum/Ex and MM Warburg.” A spokesman for the Cologne public prosecutor's office did not want to comment on the report on FAZ.NET.

According to "Spiegel", the investigators noticed the following about the mayor's sensitive meetings with Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, the majority owners of the Warburg Bank, in autumn 2016: "Not noted in Scholz's electronic mailbox." Scholz was in 2016 before the decision of the Financial administration, not to reclaim the taxes from the bank, met twice with their Olearius and Max Warburg.

At that time, investigations were already underway against Olearius on suspicion of serious tax evasion in connection with "cum-ex" transactions.

Serious allegations by the CDU

In Hamburg, the CDU politician Wiese accuses the Social Democrats of withholding information about dealing with the Warburg Bank.

"The role of the SPD-led Senate in the decision not to reclaim the taxes from Warburg remains unclear," he said.

"It is shocking to see how SPD politicians stonewall all along the line, most recently Chancellor Scholz again in the federal press conference."

In his summer press conference in Berlin on Thursday, the Chancellor once again rejected all allegations of political influence in the case.

Despite repeated requests, Scholz "shirked the answer" as to whether he had also prepared his meetings with the bankers with Johannes Kahrs, then a member of the Bundestag and SPD district chairman in Hamburg-Mitte, said Wiese.

“Johannes Kahrs rejects any statement.

It is hard to imagine that the information from the SPD environment that has been presented to the committee so far is complete.”

The Cologne public prosecutor's office is investigating against Kahrs, the former Hamburg Senator for the Interior Alfons Pawelczyk (SPD) and an officer responsible for Warburg in the tax office for large companies.

They are accused of favoring tax evasion in a "cum-ex" context.

A search last year found more than 200,000 euros in cash in a locker at Kahrs.