In the glass conference room on Adolphsplatz last Wednesday, the MPs from the SPD and the Greens in Hamburg clearly indicated that they would have preferred to skip this committee meeting. Even the time – half an hour before the start of the citizenship meeting, when all committee members had to be in the town hall next door – made it clear that these meetings are increasingly being perceived as a side issue.
The government factions would have preferred it if the parliamentary committee of inquiry (PUA) to clarify the cum-ex involvement of the Senate and the tax authorities had already been as good as over. One would be working on a final report and could then declare the processing of the political events to be complete. Brought, as the green and red committee members emphasize at every opportunity, the committee of inquiry would have little or nothing anyway.
But under pressure from the opposition factions, the committee does an extra round. Interviews with the first additional witnesses are scheduled to begin on April 14. In November last year, almost exactly two years after the PUA was set up in autumn 2020, the committee decided to extend the investigation mandate to the cum-ex transactions of the former HSH Nordbank. The SPD and Greens had approved the application under protest, because otherwise a new PUA would have been set up, which the opposition would have the opportunity to do thanks to its minority rights.
However, since the committee is now continuing anyway, in the coming months the question will again be why Hamburg’s former mayor and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) met the bank shareholder Christian Olearius several times in 2016 and 2017 or on the phone with him – and what the conversations were about.
The suspicion of the opposition: The talks had an impact on the decision of the Hamburg tax authorities in 2016 to waive a tax refund from the bank in the amount of 47 million euros. A further 43 million euros were only claimed in 2017 after the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened shortly before the statute of limitations expired. The money was capital gains tax, which the bank is said to have been wrongly reimbursed.
Scholz has already testified twice before the Hamburg investigative committee, in spring 2021 and in summer 2022. Before that, in 2020, he had also had to answer questions from the members of the Bundestag Finance Committee about possible cum-ex implications. Since the Hamburg opposition sees differences between the statements in Hamburg and Berlin, all former members of the Finance Committee in Hamburg are now to be heard.
19 of them – including the former Left MP and experienced Cum-Ex critic Fabio de Masi – are scheduled to testify on April 14th. The remaining 19 witnesses are to be heard in Hamburg exactly one week later.
According to the application for evidence, the surveys are intended to clarify what Scholz said verbatim in the finance committee. Although the Hamburg Committee has short minutes of the meetings, these are not verbatim minutes. After the hearing of the Berlin witnesses, Scholz himself should testify again. A date is not yet known.
In between or after Scholz, the surveys on cum-ex transactions at HSH Nordbank should also begin. The task force has just received the requested documents on the complex. In about two months, he wants to have the files prepared so far that the deputies can agree on which witnesses will be heard in which order.
But there is also a need for clarification within the committee in the coming weeks. Last week, media reports revealed that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had expressed concerns about handing over the management of the PUA’s working staff to the incumbent proposed by the SPD. The background is apparently Russia references that arose in the course of a routine check by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution when taking office in the summer of 2022.
The Russia references resulted from his family connections, the head of the task force then explained. The issue will now occupy the secret subcommittee on constitutional issues.
Meanwhile, the criminal investigation of the cum-ex scandal continues. The Cologne public prosecutor’s office, which is responsible for the nationwide proceedings, is still dealing with the question of the extent to which the formerly powerful Hamburg SPD members Johannes Kahrs and Alfons Pawelczyk were involved in the cum-ex scandal surrounding the Warburgbank. According to a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne, further data carriers are currently being viewed.
