Court clears Deutsche Bank’s role in CO2 tax fraud – Reuters Germany

Frankfurt Before the Landgericht Frankfurt has started on Monday the tax fraud trial of seven former and current employees of Deutsche Bank.

The 2nd Great Economic Criminal Court tried doing to clarify the role played by the institution in a VAT carousel, with a few months 220 million euros evaded in taxes. He was charged with “gang-fraud”. The bankers should have helped fraudulent dealers who had the German Bank weighed heavily in their process four years ago. Until the end of May so far 26 days of hearings are scheduled.

Two of the defendants presented immediately after the start of the hearing a motion for bias against the presiding judge Martin Bach and two assessors. You feel prejudiced by public statements Bach as their lawyers ran. He had also passed the first CO2 method.

Only two accused are still on the payroll of the Institute, but are suspended from duty. The former most senior indictee has retired. The German bank had reimbursed the taxes to the tax office.

The prosecutors throw the bank employees in 865 pages thick before indictment to have enlisted the CO2-dealer and passed suspicions fragmented to supervisors and internal control bodies. Otherwise lucrative for the German banking transactions could have been prevented earlier. Some of the sentenced to long prison terms CO2 traders had stated in court that they had been received by the Bank with open arms – unlike other institutions.

The money house had promoting trade with CO2 pollution rights taken up the cause, as the Federal Government Certificates 2009 distributed to the industry. But the trade attracted fraudsters who wanted to make use of the fact that the papers were subject to VAT. They led the certificates exempt from abroad and sold them in Germany. But they made tax claims from the tax office, which had never been paid. At the end of the papers were always sold to the German bank, which they transferred abroad.