The Cum-Ex refunds ran ten years. Now, a plan. Now
Germany announces a crackdown on tax fraud and money laundering, and the arithmetic of the announcement tells you everything: estimated annual losses of €100 to €200 billion — nobody knows, there are 'no official figures', the hole is too dark to measure — against next year's €200 billion in fresh debt. The state borrows roughly what it declines to collect. Has done for years. Will now form a committee about it.
History advises patience, and not the good kind. The Cum-Ex scheme refunded capital gains taxes 'which had been paid only once or not at all' MULTIPLE TIMES, for over a decade, in plain sight, before anyone moved. Voluntary self-disclosure with immunity — the buy-your-way-out counter — has been open since 1919, doing its briskest trade whenever a Swiss bank CD leaked. The system was not asleep. The system was furnished this way.
The new plan is real enough on paper: 1,500 posts, an AI center, 15-year maximum sentences, Porsches seized for 180 days. But note the tense throughout — 'planned', 'set to', 'starting in 2028'. The cash-register requirement for jewellers arrives in two budgets' time. The fraudsters, presumably, have calendars too.
'No one should be able to rest assured that they won't be caught,' says the minister. A fine sentence. It has been said before, in this same building, in better weather. The honest, as ever, pay on time and read about the rest in the paper. Winter, as always, is unbothered — and its accounts are offshore.