German lawyer sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for cum-ex tax fraud

On January 30, a former top lawyer of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Germany was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court for aiding and abetting serious tax evasion in the “cum-ex” scandal.

The man, who can still appeal his sentence, provided advice to Maple Bank on cum-ex deals, which allowed for tax rebates on sums that were never paid. For a long time, the legality of such deals remained uncertain.

Expert calculations suggest that Europe’s largest economy lost almost 36 billion euros (38.9 billion U.S. dollars) as a result of the scandal, with other countries in the bloc also experiencing losses in the billions.

The indictment states that Maple Bank alone caused a tax loss of around 388 million euros. In addition to the convicted lawyer, a former Maple banker received a two-year suspended sentence for tax evasion after confessing at the start of the trial.

Last year, Hanno Berger, a key figure in the scandal, received his second verdict, bringing his total prison term to 15 years. Berger, who was considered the pioneer of the cum-ex deals, had evaded German justice for years in Switzerland.

(1 euro = 1.08 U.S. dollar)