The Hamburg cum-ex affair follows Olaf Scholz to the Chancellery.

On Friday next week he is expected for the second time as a witness in the investigative committee.

The committee is to clarify whether there was political influence on the decision of the Hanseatic city's financial administration to waive a tax refund of 47 million euros from the Warburg Bank involved in the cum-ex scandal in autumn 2016.

Scholz, who was mayor until March 2018, denies any influence, as does his successor in the town hall and former finance senator Peter Tschentscher.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Marcus Young

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Matthias Wysuwa

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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Shortly before the chancellor's questioning, new details leaked out to the public that caused a stir.

Mainly because it is said to be more than 200,000 euros in the safe deposit box of a social democrat who has long been one of Scholz's very important party friends in Hamburg: Johannes Kahrs.

Kahrs was once a big hit as a budget politician for the SPD parliamentary group in Berlin and even bigger in Hamburg;

For many years he also led the SPD district association Mitte.

In May 2020, he surprisingly resigned his Bundestag mandate and his offices.

The reason he gave was his failed attempt to become the new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces.

A "diabolical" plan?

When the Hamburg investigative committee started its work in autumn 2020, the name Kahrs had already appeared in the reports on the Cum-ex affair.

In 2017, his district association is said to have received 38,000 euros in donations from Warburg-Bank directly or through its subsidiaries.

At the end of September 2021, shortly after the federal elections, the Cologne public prosecutor's office conducted searches in Hamburg, including in offices of the tax authorities, but also at Kahrs.

It is determined because of the initial suspicion of favoritism.

It is about the allegation that Kahrs and other suspects are said to have helped Warburg to secure advantages in connection with previous cum-ex deals.

Now that the public prosecutor's office has passed documents on the investigation to the investigative committee, it has become known that the investigators are said to have found 214,800 euros in cash and 2,400 dollars in Kahrs' safe deposit box.

The "Bild" newspaper first reported on the find.

The public prosecutor's office did not confiscate the money.

It's unclear where it came from and if it's related to the cum-ex affair.

At the request of the FAZ, the investigators emphasized that "measures to secure assets" could only be considered if there was a concrete suspicion "that a participant has obtained something from a criminal offense and there is a fear that it could also be used to secure any later court confiscation order provisional safeguarding of assets is required".

Kahrs initially did not comment.

He was also silent before the committee of inquiry last year.

There he referred to his right to refuse information, referring to the investigations.

The excitement is now great, also because further details from the investigation have only recently become known.

A private message from a central tax officer was reported.

Shortly after the tax reclaim was waived, she allegedly wrote that her "diabolical plan" had worked.

And according to the newspaper "Hamburger Abendblatt", the Cologne investigators suspect that e-mails in connection with the decision may have been specifically deleted.

The member of the Bundestag and Hamburg CDU chairman Christoph Ploß told the FAZ: "It cannot be that the Chancellor still gets away with allegedly huge memory gaps in view of these new findings." There are now the worst allegations "up to tangible corruption in the room".

The SPD must now very quickly clarify where Kahrs' money comes from, what exactly Scholz discussed with the Warburg Bank and what Tschentscher knew about the "dubious plans" of his tax officer.

The Hamburg SPD is unimpressed.

Only Kahrs himself could provide information about the money, said the chairman of the party, Milan Pein, of the FAZ. The situation in the investigative committee was unchanged: "After one and a half years of educational work and thorough questioning of over 50 witnesses from different departments, offices and authorities So far, all respondents have stated very clearly and independently of one another that there has been no political influence on tax decisions.” In Berlin, a government spokesman said that Scholz did not know anything about the money from Kahrs.

Anything relevant to the issue will be discussed in committee at the end of next week.

Whether it will be the chancellor's last appearance there remains to be seen.

The Hamburg CDU is already threatening to summon the chancellor again.