At the urging of the citizenship groups of the CDU and Left in Hamburg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) must testify again before the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (PUA) in the cum-ex tax money affair about the private bank MM Warburg.

The majority of the representatives of the committee agreed on this on Wednesday evening.

Scholz is said to have had to testify for his meetings with Warburg bankers Christian Olearius and Max Warburg for the third time after April 2021 and August 2022.

Marcus Young

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Julian Staib

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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A secret protocol from the Bundestag published just a few weeks ago suggests that Scholz remembers these meetings during his time as the first mayor of the Hanseatic city.

The Hamburg opposition considers the SPD politician's "memory gaps" to be implausible.

accusation of lying

"The minutes released by the Bundestag Finance Committee clearly show that Olaf Scholz lied.

Contrary to what he said in the Hamburg investigative committee, Scholz could remember at least one meeting with the head of Warburg Bank Christian Olearius," said Richard Seelmaecker, chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Cum-ex-PUA on Friday.

His working staff is now writing to the Federal Chancellery to coordinate dates for further statements with Scholz.

Before that, however, all 18 parliamentarians who, along with the then Federal Finance Minister Scholz, attended the non-public meeting of the Finance Committee in the Bundestag in July 2020 should be heard.

Another questioning of the Federal Chancellor before the finance committee was prevented by the traffic light coalition in Berlin this week.

"It's already difficult enough to take away Olaf Scholz's total amnesia," says Left Chairman Norbert Hackbusch.

"But these memory gaps become even more incredible if they had apparently not yet started in the finance committee in 2020".

It is high time that the Chancellor spoke openly and honestly about his role in this affair.

For two years, the PUA has been investigating the question of whether SPD politicians influenced the multi-million dollar waiver of a tax reclaim by the Hamburg tax authorities against the Warburg Bank in 2016.

Scholz and his then Senator for Finance, Peter Tschentscher, vehemently deny this.

SPD sees no contradiction

In the opinion of the SPD, the left and CDU have said goodbye to the allegation of political influence after the latest advance.

“The minutes of the meeting of the Finance Committee of the German Bundestag have been available to the PUA for almost two years.

But since April 27, 2021, the MPs from the Left and CDU have not been interested in it," explains Milan Pein, SPD chairman in the Cum-ex investigative committee.

Now the last straw is grasped.

"We invite all former members of the Finance Committee as witnesses so that it becomes clear that there is no contradiction between the minutes and the statements in the PUA." Pein considers it superfluous that the Chancellor is now being invited to Hamburg for the third time.

"Olaf Scholz has already expressed himself very clearly on the matter."