Not being able to remember can make many things easier in politics.

Especially when it comes to research.

All questions roll off if you can't remember.

The danger of contradictions in the memories is banned, or even of determinations that could later be refuted.

Anyone who doesn't remember, or at least claims to, avoids many shoals with just one sentence: I can't remember.

Marcus Young

Editor in Business.

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Matthias Wysuwa

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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However, one should then at least consistently stick to not being able to remember a fact or a meeting.

Otherwise it becomes a question of credibility.

That's where it gets complicated.

This is how Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) could fare in the cum-ex affair.

This Friday he has to face the parliamentary investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament again.

The MPs have many questions - and his memories play a central role.

The Chancellor had just seemed so confident with a view to the Cum-Ex affair.

In Hamburg, the Attorney General's Office had rejected a complaint because they did not want to initiate investigations against Scholz.

According to the prosecutors, there is no initial suspicion of criminal prosecution.

At his summer press conference in Berlin last week, Scholz emphasized several times that there had been so many hearings in the affair, so many files had been searched, and all of this had only one result: there was no political influence.

He is certain that this assessment will not change.

“I have already reported everything I can report on this, and I will report again to the committee next week.

You can read about that everywhere, because there are no new and secret facts about it.” Although he has no claim to it, he is still human enough to be happy if some would now admit that they had found out nothing.

It will certainly not come to that at his appearance in Hamburg this Friday.

Highly complex stock transactions

The Cum-Ex affair has been occupying the investigative committee in Hamburg for a year and a half, and politics in Berlin for much longer.

The committee wants to clarify whether there was political influence on the decision of the Hamburg tax authorities to refrain from reclaiming 47 million euros from the Hamburg private bank MMWarburg, which was involved in the Cum-Ex scandal, at the end of 2016.

In 2017, another 43 million euros were only reclaimed by the authorities after the Federal Ministry of Finance had intervened from Berlin.

A process that tax officials described as “highly unusual” even back then.

Scholz was the first mayor at the time.

Peter Tschentscher, who succeeded Scholz in the town hall, Senator for Finance.

Both SPD politicians deny any political influence.

The committee is primarily concentrating on the days and weeks before the first waiver decision in November 2016 - and on several meetings between the then First Mayor Scholz and the bank co-owners Christian Olearius and Max Warburg.

Scholz states that he cannot remember the details of the meeting.

When he had to testify before the investigative committee for the first time at the end of April last year, he described the allegations as a "horror tale".

For a long time, Scholz and his confidants could be confident that, apart from a circle of tax officials, tax experts and a few investigative journalists, hardly anyone was interested in the highly complex stock transactions.

Securities of Dax companies were traded, once with (cum) and once without (ex) dividend entitlement.

So-called short sellers who did not own the shares were also interposed.

This worked perfectly to confuse the tax offices.