(Bloomberg) — The judge in a key Cum-Ex prosecution against M.M. Warburg’s ex-chief executive officer has been removed from the case over allegations of bias.
(Bloomberg) — The judge in a key Cum-Ex prosecution against M.M. Warburg’s ex-chief executive officer has been removed from the case over allegations of bias.
The decision was taken by other judges of the court in Bonn at the request of Christian Olearius’s lawyers, his attorney Peter Gauweiler said in an emailed statement.
The presiding judge had secretly obtained documents and notes from a justice who had presided over other Cum-Ex cases but withheld that information from Olearius’s attorneys and also his fellow judges, according to Gauweiler.
The other judges found that “under the circumstances, Olearius reasonably may have doubts that the proceedings against him would be objective and transparent,” the attorney said.
Olearius was the first senior banker charged for allegedly taking part in the controversial Cum-Ex tax dividend scandal that cost German taxpayers billions of euros. The case is pending at the Bonn court which still has to rule whether it can go to trial. Prosecutors charged Olearius with aggravated tax evasion, claiming Cum-Ex deals he was involved in caused more than €100 million ($106 million) in tax losses.
A new presiding judge has been appointed to fill the gap in the chamber that’ll swiftly decide whether the charges may go to trial, a spokeswoman for the Bonn court said. The decision doesn’t mean the judge was actually biased, she said. A person is removed when from the reasonable point of view of the defendant the action raises concerns the judge may not be impartial, she added.
Cum-Ex was a trading strategy that siphoned off at least €10 billion in government revenue. It took advantage of German tax laws that seemed to allow multiple investors to claim refunds of a tax on dividends that was paid only once. The nation moved to abolish the practice in 2012. More than 1,600 people from the financial industry are being probed over the scandal.
(Updates with court comment in the second paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.