The German state could get back around 50 million euros from the lost US investment bank.
German authorities are facing a great success in coming to terms with the Cum-Ex scandal: The insolvency administrator of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which went under in the course of the financial crisis in 2008, has agreed to repay a large part of the profits that the bank made with Cum-Ex Stores scored.
“We hope and expect to reach an amicable solution to these matters,” said a spokesman for the insolvency administrator of Lehman Brothers International Europe to the “Handelsblatt”. The spokesman did not name an amount, but it was about a “substantial reserve”.
The “Handelsblatt” reported, citing informed circles, that it could be around 50 million euros. That would be one of the highest amounts a bank has ever sent to the state for its involvement in cum-ex deals. A spokesman for the authorities did not want to comment on the case and the negotiations with the insolvency administrator at the request of the newspaper.
Cum-ex deals
Cum-ex transactions refer to the postponement of shares around a dividend cut-off date in order to be reimbursed multiple times by the tax authorities for a capital gains tax that has been paid once. As a result, the public sector in Germany has lost billions of dollars in tax money in the past. The German government officially put a stop to the practice in 2012.
In Germany's first Cum-Ex criminal case, the Bonn district court imposed suspended sentences on two defendants in March 2020 – and at the same time determined for the first time that the controversial practice was to be regarded as criminal.
