Hamburg public prosecutor
Hamburg (ots)
Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office confirms: Still no initial suspicion against Olaf Scholz for making false statements According to a decision by the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office of February 15, 2023, there is still no initial suspicion against Olaf Scholz for making false unsworn statements to the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (PUA) “Cum-Ex tax money affair”. This confirmed an identical decision by the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office dated December 21, 2022. A Hamburg lawyer had argued that the minutes of the Finance Committee of the German Bundestag of March 4, 2020 and July 1, 2020, which are now accessible to the public, show that the person concerned in those meetings still remembered the content of a conversation with Mr. Olearius on November 10 2017, while this was no longer the case in his subsequent hearing of witnesses before the PUA in Hamburg. The public prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, came to the conclusion that no concrete memory of the person concerned could be derived from the relevant minutes. His statements, rendered in indirect speech, are objectively ambiguous. For the most part, they would only refer to findings from media reports and published diary entries by Mr. Olearius. Irrespective of this, it cannot be ruled out that any gaps in the memory of the person concerned Scholz would not have solidified until later, nor that the statements made before the PUA in Hamburg, but rather those before the Finance Committee of the German Bundestag, could have been inaccurate, which in turn would not be punishable from the outset. Due to the lack of initial suspicion, the public prosecutor’s office would therefore not consider additional testimonies of (former) members of the Bundestag or other persons in either of the two variants. As early as March 14, 2022, the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office had refrained from initiating preliminary proceedings against Scholz after the lawyer had filed a criminal complaint. This decision was also confirmed by the Attorney General’s Office on August 10, 2022. Hamburg, March 6th, 2023 Senior Public Prosecutor Sperling-Karstens General Public Prosecutor’s Office Hamburg
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