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Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - The Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office searched several apartments and companies in the wake of the Cum-Ex scandal.

In the large-scale operation on suspicion of serious tax evasion, six apartments of the accused and those affected as well as eight business premises were examined on Tuesday, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor announced on Wednesday.

In the action in Frankfurt, Oberursel, the district of Kitzingen and the Main-Kinzig district, more than 90 officials from the Hessian and Bavarian tax investigations and six public prosecutors from the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office were involved.

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"It is a completely new procedure," said a spokesman for the attorney general.

This means that they are now investigating 13 cases of the cum-ex complex.

The spokesman did not want to say which financial companies are affected.

But they are not big names.

The first of the two separate investigative complexes was directed against five people between 47 and 67 years of age who were suspected of having done stock transactions as managing director and employee of a Frankfurt securities trading company around the dividend date from 2009 to 2011, it said.

With false tax certificates, the tax authorities should have suffered damage of more than 18 million euros, according to the public prosecutor's office.

The second complex is about two suspects aged 50 and 56 who, as managing directors of a securities dealer in Frankfurt, are also said to have carried out cum-ex share transactions in 2009.

Here the judiciary spoke of a tax loss of more than 1.5 million euros.

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In “cum-ex” transactions, investors used a loophole in the law to cheat the state for billions over the years.

Around the dividend cut-off date, shares with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend entitlement were shifted back and forth between several participants.

Tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid.

The state suffered billions in damage.

In 2012 the tax loophole was closed.

Several courts and public prosecutors have been dealing with the cum-ex scandal for years.

This Thursday, a trial against the lawyer Hanno Berger, who is considered the architect of the Cum-Ex business, and other defendants will begin at the Wiesbaden Regional Court.

Berger denies the allegations.

The role of the now insolvent Maple Bank in cum-ex deals will also be dealt with by the Frankfurt Regional Court from mid-May.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210324-99-953549 / 2

Public Prosecutor General Frankfurt