It was in October 2018 that SVT Nyheter together with TT and a number of foreign newsrooms were able to reveal details from what has been called Europe's largest tax theft in modern times.

The tax fraud, which has come to be known as cum-ex, consisted of accessing a refund of tax that was never paid via a series of complicated share transactions around the date of the share dividend.

Tax authorities in six European countries estimated the fraud at at least SEK 70 billion.

Critical then

Following the revelations about the cum-ex frauds, Olaf Scholz, who belongs to the Social Democratic Party SPD, was very critical.

In a speech in 2019, he said "constructing developed models to get back tax you never paid was a big mess".

The ancient bank Warburg in Hamburg played an important role in the cum-ex tangle.

In June this year, one of the bank's top executives was sentenced by a court in Bonn to five and a half years in prison for tax offenses.

The indictment is just one of many lawsuits around Germany right now where more than 1,000 bankers, lawyers and tax advisers are suspected of tax crimes.

Let the bank avoid the repayment claim

The events so sensitive to Olaf Scholz occurred in 2016 after the Hamburg tax authority demanded Warburgbanken of around half a billion kronor after incorrect tax payments.

In the autumn of 2016, the bank's main owner met the then mayor Olaf Scholz, in two meetings where the bank argued that the city should waive the recovery.

Very correctly, the Hamburg tax authorities decided after consultation with the city's finance ministry that Warburg was allowed to keep the money.

Since then, federal tax authorities have overturned the decision.

Interrogations must be published

In July this year, Olaf Scholz was summoned to a closed committee hearing with the German Parliament's Finance Committee.

According to several members, Scholz never told about the meetings in 2016 with Warburg chief Christian Olearius.

There are now plans to publish the interrogation record.

At the same time, the Ministry of Finance is accused of delaying the process so that the publication will only take place after the federal election on Sunday.

In comments, Olaf Scholz has confirmed the meetings.

But he says he does not remember what they were talking about.

Scholz denies that he has exerted pressure for Hamburg to waive the tax recovery.

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Photo: Sara Cosar / SVT / Michael Kappeler / TT