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The dock at the start of the trial: the deception of the tax authorities was made possible with a “complimentary report”.
Photo: Andreas Arnold / dpa
In a tax case before the Frankfurt regional court, a former top Freshfields lawyer was sentenced to three years and six months in prison. The chamber decided that the former lawyer of the major law firm, Ulf Johannemann, was guilty of aiding and abetting serious tax evasion through his advice on prohibited cum-ex transactions.
According to the dpa news agency, this is the first time that a tax lawyer from a large law firm has been criminally charged for his role as an advisor in the Cum-Ex complex. Freshfields had prepared reports on the alleged tax permissibility of the share deals. The Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office accused the tax lawyer of having made it possible to deceive the tax authorities with "compliance reports".
A co-defendant at Maple Bank received a two-year suspended sentence. The bank, which was closed in 2016, caused the tax authorities damage of around 389 million euros through cum-ex transactions. In the deals, which had their peak between 2006 and 2011, investors were reimbursed for capital gains taxes they had never paid and cheated the state of an estimated total of at least ten billion euros.
The public prosecutor's office had demanded a prison sentence of five years and six months against Johannemann. He confessed - but only after the presiding judge spoke of a "high probability of distribution."
The banks and lawyers involved had cited a legal loophole in the transactions, and the loophole was closed in 2012. In 2021, the Federal Court of Justice decided that cum-ex transactions should be viewed as tax evasion.
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File number: 5/24 KLs 7480, Js 208433/21
apr/dpa