Hanno Berger

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Hanno Berger (* 1951 in Elm ) has long been considered one of the most prominent German lawyers for tax and financial products and is also regarded as the leading advisor and initiator of dividend stripping transactions (so-called " cum-ex " transactions).

Professional background

Berger was initially a university assistant to the German legal scholar Manfred Wolf ; he received his doctorate in 1980. He began his career at the Hessian financial administration, where he worked for the tax bank audit at the Frankfurt am Main-Börse tax office for 12 years. At the end of his civil service he was government director and in this position the highest-ranking tax bank auditor in Hesse.

Berger left the civil service in 1996 and became a partner in the law firm Pünder, Volhard, Weber & Axster (today: Clifford Chance ). In 1999 he moved to the US law firm Shearman & Sterling . There he kept his promise to reduce the tax rate on salaries from 50 to 5 percent through tax avoidance . The partners' salaries were shown as guaranteed payments to the US law firm, bringing them below the US tax rate (this tax loophole was later closed by the German state).

In 2004 he moved to the Frankfurt office of the now insolvent US law firm Dewey Ballantine (later: Dewey & LeBoeuf). There he became Managing Partner and accompanied the expansion of the Frankfurt office from three to around 60 lawyers. In 2010 Hanno Berger left Dewey & LeBoeuf and founded the law firm Berger Steck & Kollegen together with Kai-Uwe Steck.

His law firm dissolved in 2013 after investigations against Berger and Steck for advice on cum-ex deals .

Involvement in the cum-ex scandal

Berger is considered the leading advisor and initiator of dividend stripping transactions, which, according to a report by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, caused tax losses of over 55 billion euros.

He once said to his employees: "Anyone who cannot identify with the fact that fewer kindergartens are being built in Germany because we do such business is wrong here".

His involvement in the following cum-ex deals is publicly known:

MM Warburg

Berger advised MMWarburg & CO (or the two main shareholders at the time, the chairman of the supervisory board Christian Olearius and his deputy, Max Warburg) on ​​cum-ex deals. According to a Spiegel report published in March 2021, Warburg paid Hanno Berger and Benjamin Frey 17.5 million euros for advice on cum-ex deals. Warburg transferred the money to the Sarasin Bank , which passed it on to an offshore company owned by Berger and Frey in the British Virgin Islands .

The tax damage, d. H. the wrongly reimbursed taxes to Warburg amount to 169 million euros or 280 million euros, depending on the report (depending on the scope of the transactions considered).

Rajon (Raphael Roth)

Berger advised Rajon, an investment company of the well-known real estate investor Rafael Roth , significantly on cum-ex deals in the years 2006–2008. These brought Rajon tax credits of 123.7 million euros. These tax credits were later withdrawn by the Wiesbaden II tax office. The HVB , which completed the underlying equity transactions and therefore was liable debtor for the reversal of the tax credit, then sued u. A. Rajon and Berger before the Frankfurt Regional Court on the tax damage she suffered. The legal proceedings ended with a settlement brokered by the investor Clemens Vedder , in which HVB assumed the majority of the tax damage and Rajon undertook to pay HVB around EUR 30 million. Berger, on the other hand, did not have to pay any damages. The Frankfurt Regional Court had previously pointed out that it considered HVB's action for damages against Berger to be futile.

Sheridan Fund

Berger is said to have been a key advisor and initiator of funds of the Luxembourg fund house Sheridan, which invested in cum-ex share transactions with shares in German blue chips and were sold by the Swiss bank Sarasin . Investors in these funds included AWD founder Carsten Maschmeyer and his wife, actress Veronica Ferres , soccer coach Mirko Slomka , meat manufacturer Clemens Tönnies , media lawyer Matthias Prinz , sports entrepreneur Peter Schöffel and drugstore entrepreneur Erwin Müller .

According to the media report, legal and tax advice based on the report by Berger's law firm has been insured by Allianz, HDI Gerling and the Wiesbaden insurance company with separate financial loss liability insurance of 100 million euros . The premium was 300,000 euros. One of the investors, sports entrepreneur Peter Schöffel, stated that the insurance company had increased his confidence in his fund investment of around EUR 5 million. After the collapse of the Sheridan Fund, however, the insurance companies refused to pay damages based on the insurance policy. With these funds, however, the tax authorities refused to refund taxes, which made them a losing business for investors. 

Criminal proceedings

There are three criminal proceedings against Berger because of his involvement in dividend stripping transactions. He is accused of complicit and serious tax evasion with damage in the three-digit million range and of commercial gang fraud. For this reason, his office and private rooms in Germany and Switzerland were searched in 2012 and 2014 . In addition, investigators from the North Rhine-Westphalian State Criminal Police Office listened to his phone calls with business partners in autumn 2014. In early October 2017 against Berger and former stockbroker of HypoVereinsbank by the Attorney General's Office Frankfurt indictment before the economic Criminal Chamber of the Landgericht Wiesbaden be levied. Berger is defended by Wolfgang Kubicki and Norbert Gatzweiler , among others . The procedure was delayed again and again; the indictment came only in 2020. Berger's lawyer said his client could not attend the trial for health reasons.

Berger said in an interview in September 2019 that he did not see himself in the wrong. The federal government at the time was responsible for not closing all loopholes in the law.

In November 2020, the Wiesbaden regional court issued an arrest warrant against Berger - eight years after he left for Switzerland. He was advertised nationwide for a manhunt . After Berger had not followed a summons from the Bonn Regional Court , it issued an arrest warrant in June 2021. On July 7, 2021, Berger was arrested in the canton of Graubünden on an extradition request from Germany. The Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed the arrest. Berger is in extradition custody .

family

Berger is married and has one daughter. He lives with his wife in Zuoz in Switzerland , where he fled Germany in November 2012 when he learned of a raid in his Frankfurt law firm.

Works

  • Distribution of damage in the event of bank disruptions - at the same time an attempt to concretise the risk concept and the liability system in cases of operational or organizational risks . Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 978-3-88129-336-5 (dissertation).
  • with Kai-Uwe Steck and Dieter Lübbehüsen (eds.): Investment Act, Investment Tax Act - Commentary . Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-58171-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ High Noon in the Cum-Ex Committee: Witnesses on the role of Freshfields. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Surprising separation: Hanno Berger leaves Dewey & LeBoeuf. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b "Elmer tax lawyer Berger feels persecuted by the state and is stuck in Switzerland" fuldaerzeitung.de from February 14, 2015. Accessed on June 11, 2017.
  4. ↑ memorial for Manfred Wolf ( memento of September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), PDF page 6, accessed on July 10, 2021.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Lutz Ackermann, Benedikt Becker, Manuel Daubenberger, Philip Faigle, Karsten Polke-Majewski, Felix Rohrbeck, Christian Salewski, Oliver Schröm: The coup of the century. In: Die ZEIT . October 18, 2018, accessed October 18, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e Oliver Schröm, Oliver Hollenstein: Tax expert and lawyer Hanno Berger: The man behind the cum-ex-scam. In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved March 26, 2021 .
  7. ↑ Prominent growth: Shearman tax partner Berger goes to Dewey. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  8. ↑ New start: Berger Steck & Kollegen establish tax and investment boutique. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Frankfurt: Large Berger Steck team opts for Heuking. September 2, 2013, accessed June 11, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Cum-Ex-Trades: Rajon provisionally fails with Berger Steck in front of the tax court. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Comparison: Gleiss client HVB ends cum-ex dispute with Roth. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  12. ↑ The billionaire formula - the Cum-Ex network is expanding. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Process start: drugstore entrepreneur wants 45 million euros from Sarasin. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Controversial cum-ex deals: Maschmeyer sued Sarasin, media lawyer Prinz and other celebrities also involved. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  15. ↑ a b c With the seal of big finance. Retrieved October 1, 2017 .
  16. ^ Lutz Ackermann, Benedikt Becker, Manuel Daubenberger, Philip Faigle, Karsten Polke-Majewski: Cum-Ex: The biggest tax robbery in German history . In: The time . June 8, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed September 18, 2017]).
  17. ↑ LTO: Higher Regional Court Frankfurt: Cum-ex deals are also gang fraud. Retrieved March 12, 2021 .
  18. ↑ a b The little German eavesdropping. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Klaus Ott: Public Prosecutor's Office charges billions for robbery. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 3, 2017, accessed December 5, 2017 .
  20. ^ Felix Rohrbeck, Christian Salewski, Oliver Schröm: The double Kubicki . In: Die Zeit , No. 47 from November 16, 2017, p. 27.
  21. ↑ René Bender, Sönke Iwersen Volker Votsmeier: "Cum-Ex tax scandal: main defendant reports sick" handelsblatt.com of June 29, 2020
  22. ↑ Monika Dunkel and Timo Pache: "Why Mr. Cum-Ex sees himself as a victim of a judicial scandal" Capital.de from September 4, 2019
  23. ^ A b Frederik Obermaier, Klaus Ott, Jan Willmroth: Arrest warrant against Dr. Cum-Ex. SZ.de, November 4, 2020
  24. ↑ Swiss investigators arrest key figure in the cum-ex scandal. In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved July 9, 2021 .
  25. ↑ Cum-ex scandal: tax attorney Hanno Berger arrested in Switzerland. Retrieved July 9, 2021 .
  26. ↑ Hanno Mußler: Arrested in Switzerland: Cum-ex lawyer Hanno Berger in custody for extradition . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed July 9, 2021]).
personal data
SURNAME Berger, Hanno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer for tax products and financial products
DATE OF BIRTH 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Elm