{"id":18950,"date":"2018-10-18T12:28:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T12:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18950"},"modified":"2018-10-18T12:28:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T12:28:15","slug":"media-investigation-exposes-scale-of-years-long-european-tax-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18950","title":{"rendered":"Media investigation exposes scale of years-long European tax scam"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A gigantic years-long tax scam saw banks drain 55bn euros ($63bn) from national treasuries in Europe<\/a>, a far larger sum than previously thought, media from across the continent reported on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The so-called “cum-ex” deals relied on complex tax trickery that allowed owners of shares to claim several times over refunds for tax paid only once on dividend payouts – effectively syphoning off taxpayers’ money into investors’ pockets.<\/p>\n

So far, estimates of the damage had ranged from 5.3bn euros according to the German<\/a> finance ministry to 30bn, according to press reports.<\/p>\n

But a joint investigation by European media outlets has concluded that at least 55.2bn euros were stolen from 11 countries: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Finland, Norway and Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Reportedly conceived by well-known German lawyer Hanno Berger, the cum-ex method relies on several investors buying and reselling shares in a company among themselves around the day when the firm pays out its dividend.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stock changes hands so quickly that the tax authorities are unable to identify who is the true owner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Working together, the investors can claim multiple rebates for tax paid on the dividend and share out the profits among themselves – with the treasury footing the bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cum-ex scandal first exploded in Germany in 2012, with six criminal investigations opened and a trial against Berger and several stock market traders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday’s investigation, led by investigative journalism website Correctiv and drawing in big-name outlets like German public broadcaster ARD and French newspaper Le Monde, calculates the damage to each country involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Germany, investors spirited away 31.8bn euros, according to calculations by University of Mannheim tax specialist Professor Christoph Spengel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, French taxpayers lost out to the tune of “at least 17bn euros”, Italians 4.5bn, Danes 1.7bn and Belgians 201m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A gigantic years-long tax scam saw banks drain 55bn euros ($63bn) from national treasuries in Europe, a far larger sum than previously thought, media from across the continent reported on Thursday. The so-called “cum-ex” deals relied on complex tax trickery that allowed owners of shares to claim several times over refunds for tax paid only…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}