Hanno Berger, the tax lawyer dubbed “the brain behind Cum-Ex,” was extradited from Switzerland to Germany, where he’s been pursued by authorities for his role in the controversial tax-driven trading strategy.
Berger, a 71-year old German, who avoided his home country for more than nine years before his arrest in July, was handed over by Swiss authorities on Thursday. He will now be moved to a court in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt prosecutors said by email. Switzerland’s top judges earlier this week refused to consider his appeal, exhausting his last chance to fight his extradition.
Kai Schaffelhuber, Berger’s lawyer, didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Prosecutors in Frankfurt
Cum-Ex was a controversial trading strategy that took advantage of laws that seemed to allow users to obtain duplicate refunds on dividend taxes. Germany is looking at roughly 1,350 suspects from across the financial industry linked to the strategy that may have cost taxpayers more than 10 billion euros by the time Germany revised its tax rules in 2012.
Once the nation’s most profitable tax lawyer, Berger was a central player in the scandal, advising rich investors on how to use the strategy that until about 2005 had been limited to banks. His role was widely discussed at the first German Cum-Ex
