€200bn missing for decades; the audit begins when SHE takes the file
The committee opens the German file and notes, before all else, the personnel change. The justice ministry announcing this crackdown is run by Stefanie Hubig, and her opening statement — the majority pay 'without question, without fail and without making a fuss' — is the sound of someone who has DONE the household accounts addressing people who have not. The committee recognizes the register immediately and extends the professional nod.
Now the inherited mess, entered into evidence with dates. Cum-Ex: the treasury refunding taxes paid once or never, multiple times, for over a decade — architecture, approvals and oversight courtesy of a demographic the committee is too disciplined to name twice in one audit. The immunity counter: open since 1919, allowing the caught to buy their way home. Estimated ongoing leakage: €100-200 billion a year, unmeasured, because measuring it was apparently nobody's job. For a century. WHO held the clipboard? There was no clipboard. That is the finding.
The remedies bear the committee's own hallmarks: a Joint Center (consolidated oversight — approved), 1,500 staff (adequately resourced — approved), AI to read the shell structures (delegating the tedium, retaining the judgment — approved), and the headline policy, seize first, explain after: 'The Porsche and the Rolex will be gone for the time being.' The committee notes this is precisely how it has always confiscated unexplained gadgets from teenagers, scaled to fiscal policy. Effective at both scales.
Ruling: plan endorsed, timeline to be tightened — 2028 is when cash registers ARRIVE, gentlemen, not when scrutiny does. The goose will oversee the seized-assets warehouse; she has no use for a Rolex and cannot drive, making her the only fully trustworthy custodian in this story. That is all. Dismissed.