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Hamburg (dpa / lno) - The CDU has asked Federal Finance Minister and SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz to provide clarity when he appeared before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (PUA) on the "Cum-Ex" affair.
"The accusation of the political influence of key decision-makers in the city is in the room and must be extensively cleared," said the chairman of the CDU in the PUA of the Hamburg citizenship, Götz Wiese, on Thursday.
Scholz is expected on Friday as a witness before the committee, which is supposed to clarify whether leading SPD politicians have had any influence on the tax treatment of the Warburg Bank involved in the "Cum-Ex" scandal.
The Vice Chancellor, who was First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, denies this.
He expected Scholz to answer the question, "why Hamburg waived a claim of 47 million euros from cum-ex transactions against the Warburg Bank," said Wiese.
"It is also completely incomprehensible why the Senate wanted to forego another 43 million when the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened."
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The background to this are meetings between Scholz and Warburg co-owner Christian Olearius in 2016 and 2017, against whom investigations were already underway on suspicion of serious tax evasion.
The city later allowed possible additional tax claims of 47 million euros to be statute-barred, a further 43 million euros was only claimed after the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened.
In the meantime, the bank has paid all claims, but this is not an admission of guilt, as it emphasizes.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210429-99-402108 / 2