At the time, Scholz was the mayor of Hamburg and Olearius (banker) had met him to plead for tax forgiveness, according to an indictment against the banker seen by the Financial Times.

The 371-page indictment against Olearius mentions the chancellor 28 times. Prosecutors also point out that the 81-year-old banker made a €13,000 donation to Scholz’s party during his lobbying campaign. Weeks after two meetings between Olearius and Scholz in late 2016, Hamburg’s tax authority abruptly changed its view and dropped a €47mn claim Warburg was supposed to pay.

Scholz has repeatedly said he cannot remember what he discussed with Olearius. He is adamant that he did not interfere at all with the city tax authority’s decision in favour of the bank. A spokesperson for the German chancellor's office declined to comment.

Yet a number of red flags that include the sequence of events, missing documents and an inaccurate public statement by Hamburg authorities have cast doubts over what really happened behind the scenes.

When Olearius made his case to Scholz in person, the politician “listened attentively and asked smart questions”, the banker wrote in his diary. He also noted that Scholz “did not promise anything” and “did not indicate if and how he may act”. However, Scholz told him he “expected” the banker to remain in touch over the tax issue, assuring him his door was always open.

During a second meeting, Olearius handed Scholz a draft document outlining the bank’s arguments, according to the diary. A few days later, Scholz called him and suggested sending the document to Hamburg’s finance senator, without adding any additional personal comments.

Olearius did so, and the finance senator subsequently forwarded the document to the officials working on the case. In a handwritten note, which was uncovered by prosecutors, the finance senator requested an update on the “state of affairs”.

Days later, the tax office changed its view in favour of Warburg, dropping its claim for €47mn in what it had previously described as illicit tax refunds received by the bank. The finance senator Scholz suggested getting in touch with was briefed about the decision, according to the indictment.

What makes the scandal particularly toxic is the fact that the tax refunds Hamburg had changed its mind about were linked to controversial share-swapping deals dubbed cum-ex. Named after the Latin term for “with” and “without”, these transactions exploited a design flaw in the German tax code. Participants, including Warburg, tricked tax authorities into refunding dividend tax that was never paid in the first place.

His apparent lobbying campaign did not pay off in the end. He and Warburg lost a series of lawsuits, including at the Federal Court of Justice, which ruled that cum-ex was a tax fraud scheme. Since early 2020, Warburg has paid back a total of €250mn to the tax authorities. In a statement on its website, the bank conceded that “the tax assessments of cum-ex transactions by Warburg group has turned out to be wrong”.

Cum-ex has become a full-blown political scandal since 2021, when it emerged that Hamburg authorities had failed to disclose the meetings between Scholz and Olearius. Asked in 2019 by the hard-left Die Linke party in the city state’s parliament if there were any discussions between the senate and the bank over the tax issue, and if Scholz may have been involved, the local government responded: “No”.

By then, Scholz had moved on to serve as minister of finance in the past government led by Angela Merkel. He was elected chancellor in 2021.

The banker’s diaries outline that even the tax official who was in charge of the matter recommended the bank'“seek political support” in the summer of 2016. Olearius also describes how a former senior Hamburg politician and Social Democrat, who had become paid adviser for Warburg, reached out to Scholz ahead of the banker’s meetings with the mayor.

According to the diaries, the adviser then told Olearius that “[Scholz] is looking into the matter”. After the tax decision in 2016, the adviser told Olearius that he was partly responsible for the positive turn.

In 2017, Hamburg indicated it was willing to waive another €57mn tax claim against Warburg. That was prevented, at the last minute, by a rare intervention by the finance ministry in Berlin. The federal government later also shot down a deal between Hamburg’s tax authority and Warburg that would have reduced its total tax bill by €124mn.

Over several years, Hamburg’s tax authority was “suspiciously willing to factor in MM Warburg’s interests in its decision making”, Cologne criminal prosecutors alleged in separate documents seen by the FT. They also point out that Olearius listed several individuals in handwritten notes who needed to be thanked after the decision. That list included Scholz, plus a tick behind his name.

After raiding Hamburg’s tax authority, prosecutors were surprised to discover a suspicious shortage of email communication about the Warburg case between officials. They also noticed other apparent inconsistencies: while few emails about cum-ex and Warburg existed, a number of meetings about the topic took place, as diary entries showed. All this, and other circumstantial evidence could point to a “selective deletion” of data before the raid, the prosecutors argue.

Good ol' olaf

TL;DR the bank tried to get money from taxes it didn't even paid, the head of bank visited olaf, mysteriously the issue resolved itself, the banker had a diary about it, olaf says "never met the guy, didn't do nothin'"