'Mastermind' of Europe's biggest tax scandal loses case

Hanno Berger, a German lawyer once dubbed the "mastermind" of Cum-Ex, lost a fight over a conviction in the tax scandal that robbed billions of euros from government coffers and ensnared some of Wall Street's biggest banks.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected a bid to overturn criminal court rulings in a case where he was sentenced to eight years in prison. The sentence was originally handed down by Bonn judges and later upheld by a federal appeals court.

In the latest ruling, Germany's top court said the lawyer's arguments weren't enough to merit a further review by judges, according to a statement on its website on Tuesday. 

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Philipp Fölsing, Berger's attorney, said he will now take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. He said it seemed that German judges no longer wanted to deal with his client's concerns — even though the conviction violated the terms of his extradition from Switzerland by failing to take into account that German tax authorities recklessly contributed to the scam.

Cum-Ex took advantage of laws that seemed to allow duplicate refunds on dividend taxes that siphoned off massive amounts of government revenue over several years. Germany is looking at more than 1,800 suspects from across the financial industry and banks from Morgan Stanley to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Berger's complaint targeted his conviction in Bonn where he stood trial over transactions that cost Germany €278 million ($302 million.) As part of that verdict, the judges also seized €13.7 million from the attorney. In a separate case in Wiesbaden, he'd been sentenced to another eight years and three months in May 2023. 

Tuesday's ruling is: BVerfG, 2 BvR 1816/23.