The main hearing in another cum-ex criminal case has begun before the Frankfurt Regional Court. Two men are accused of causing millions in damages to the tax authorities. They did not act alone.
Am Frankfurt am Main Regional Court is on Thursday in the multi-billion dollar tax scandal Cum-Ex deals another process started. Two fund managers have been charged on suspicion of tax evasion in two particularly serious cases (Section 370 Paragraph 3 of the Tax Code), as a spokesman for the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office announced.
The public prosecutor’s office brought charges against the two Germans last December. According to previous information, they are accused of having taken part in cum-ex deals in a “gang-like structure” in consultation with other accomplices in 2008 and 2009. The aim was therefore to unlawfully obtain a refund of capital gains tax from the state.
Millions in profits from illegal businesses
The group’s deals are said to have caused tax damage to the tax authorities of over 45 million euros, according to the public prosecutor’s office. The Handelsblatt reports that the two men are said to have earned over a million euros each from the stock transactions.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, the accused used a fund company they ran based in Gibraltar for stock transactions “within artificially created trading chains with the aim of bringing about unlawful tax credits.” In the cum-ex scene, people spoke of “voucher printing,” a derisive term for an easy-to-obtain tax certificate.
This is the second indictment in the procedural complex involving the Benelux bank Fortis, in which a managing director had previously been sentenced to three years and three months in prison in November 2023.
Cum-Ex is the biggest tax scandal in the Federal Republic
Cum-ex deals by banks and investment companies caused the German state an estimated tax loss of at least ten billion euros. In the transactions that had their peak until 2011, investors had capital gains tax paid on dividends reimbursed several times with the help of banks.
Around the dividend record date, shares with and without dividend entitlement were moved back and forth between those involved. In the end, tax offices refunded taxes on dividends that had not previously been paid.
Politicians only reacted with a change in the law in 2012. The Federal Court of Justice decided in 2021that cum-ex transactions are to be viewed as tax evasion. The Cum-Ex fraud is considered the largest tax scandal in the Federal Republic. Gradually, more and more defendants were convicted, including the key figure Hanno Berger and his former confidant Kai-Uwe Steck.
dpa/sts/LTO editorial team
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Fund managers are on trial: . In: Legal Tribune Online, October 23, 2025, (accessed on: October 23, 2025)
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