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Hamburg (dpa) - The Warburg Bank involved in the Cum-Ex scandal has, according to its own information, paid all tax claims.
After the group had already paid around 44 million euros to the tax office for large companies in Hamburg in April 2020, another 111 million euros had now been transferred at the end of 2020, the bank announced in Hamburg on Thursday.
The money was made available by the two main shareholders of the Warburg Group.
With the payments totaling 155 million euros, "the taxes set by the tax office for the years 2007 to 2011 due to the so-called cum-ex share transactions of Warburg Bank have been paid in full," emphasized the bank.
The collection of taxes ordered by the Bonn Regional Court in March 2020 is now done.
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The bank emphasized that it had now paid the entire tax amount on its own, "although third parties initiated and processed the business and made large profits, while the Warburg Group never intended to wrongly benefit from tax credits."
Accordingly, the bank still does not share the tax assessment of the authorities, according to which it is to be claimed primarily and solely for all tax claims - and continues to take legal action against the tax assessments.
"Claims for damages have now been filed against the initiators, liquidators and profiteers of the business," said the bank.
Various banks, investors and tax law experts have been involved in controversial cum-ex tax deals for years.
These transactions resulted in billions in damage to the treasury.
In cum-ex transactions, stock traders staged a confusion with the tax authorities with stocks with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend entitlements.
Investors have a capital gains tax paid once on stock dividends reimbursed several times with the help of banks.
For this purpose, these shares were shifted back and forth between several participants around the dividend cut-off date.
Tax authorities then reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid.
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The cum-ex scandal and the tax treatment of the Warburg Bank also occupy a parliamentary committee of inquiry of the Hamburg citizenship.
The committee was constituted in November and is supposed to clarify a possible influence of leading SPD politicians in the tax proceedings in favor of the Hamburg private bank.
The background to this are meetings between the then mayor and current Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) in 2016 and 2017 with Warburg co-owner Christian Olearius, against whom investigations were underway on suspicion of serious tax evasion in connection with cum-ex deals.
Hamburg later allowed possible tax claims of 47 million euros to become statute-barred, and a further 43 million euros was only claimed after the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened.
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The meetings had become known through entries in the diary of Olearius, which also suggested a close relationship between bank representatives and the responsible tax officer.
Both Scholz and his successor in the town hall, Peter Tschentscher (SPD), who was Finance Senator at the time, have rejected all allegations in this context.
The committee, which has so far only dealt with procedural and personnel issues, after examining the documents requested by the Senate, is expected to meet for its third meeting in March.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210114-99-26069 / 2
Warburg to Cum-Ex
Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry