“Thank you, USA!”
Radek Sikorski, MEP
“Thank you, Olaf Scholz!”
Society for German Garden Gnomes
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven [Edgar Allan Poe, Descent into the Maelström (1856)].
Most observers—even those extremely hostile to Scholz—tend to see him as a blithering idiot, stooge or punching-bag for the Annalena “Miss Piggy” Baerbock faction. However, on February 21, 2023, Professor Michel Chossudovsky published a piece on the Nord Stream blast referring to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ own statements, and suggesting that the latter had, from the outset, been in on the plan to physically demolish Nord Stream.
As the Professor’s article did not, however, report the passages below from Scholz’ intervention in German at the notorious Washington press conference on February 7, 2022 allow us to do so now. There, President Biden publicly announced that the Deed would be Done. Picking up where Biden had left off (“I promise you we will be able to do it…”) Scholz stated the following:
Olaf Scholz ((from 5 mins. 9 seconds):
“Let’s be clear. In order to concretely implement whatever sanctions be needed, should it come to an attack on the Ukraine, our preparations have been intense. We must do whatever may be called for, to make Russia understand that the measures will be tough and far-reaching. Obviously, we will not toss all our cards onto the table: the Russians must be made to realize that a great deal more may occur, than they would even imagine. Meanwhile making it perfectly plain that we’re well prepared. The measures will be far-reaching.”
[More here].
To get a handle on the purported “blithering idiot,” “stooge,” or, rather more likely, Quisling, backtrack to the 1980s.
Where There’s a Steklov, There Must be a Schmolz
According to the French version of Wikipedia, two short lines of which brush off Scholz’ role in the CumEx affair—it just happens to be the biggest tax fraud in German history—in 1982 at 24 years of age Olaf Scholz was appointed Federal Vice-President of the JUSOS (Young Socialists), quite the power-brokering agency in the social-democracy at the time. The French weekly L’Express then described him as “far closer to the DDR’s Communists than to West-German leaders”, as Scholz made a name for himself calling for Germany to leave NATO, and for all US medium-range nuclear weapons to be withdrawn from her territory.
In his role as JUSO VP (1982-1988) and VP of the International Union of Socialist Youth (1987-1989), Scholz crossed over to the DDR several times. One of his meetings with Egon Krenz and the DDR Nomenklatura made prime-time television in the DDR:
As the nail-hard East German delegation stares impudently across the table at the baby-faced West German youths, giddy with their own sense of importance, one can only wonder… at what went on behind the scenes. Trained in the USSR, with the Stasi and the apparatchiki weeviling into the woodwork, the Nomenklatura rarely wasted the main chance. In any event, the above video conveniently popped up on YT on August 19, 2022, just as Olaf Scholz appeared before the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry (PUA) on the CumEx affair.
One should perhaps add that until 1989, given the red-tape, surveillance and harassment on both sides of the Wall, few Westerners ever attempted to travel to the East bloc. But Olaf Scholz, plainly, had slippery skin.
Olaf Scholz, A Babe in the DDR Wood
“Europe, not Euroshima!”
Freie Deutsche Jugend slogan
As one might imagine, Olaf Scholz’ profile as one more braying ass in NATO’s stable of useful idiots, resembles that of his contemporary Jens Stoltenberg, known as Steklov to the KGB whilst still a “socialist” teenager.
Thus, on February 5, 2022 Markus Decker, ex-member of the Freie Deutsche Jugend or FDJ (Free German Youth, outlawed as anti-constitutional in West Germany from 1951), penned a short note confirming that , in 1983 he attended an FDJ camp at Werder an der Havel in the DDR, with Olaf Scholz essentially at its helm.
“Scholz was six years older than I … he headed the delegation (West German—editor’s note) to Werder, and was more a player, than a mere onlooker. Scholz travelled to the DDR several times. According to reports, he was waved through the checkpoints, and inter alia met with someone who would be much talked of in 1989: Egon Krenz, Secretary of the SED (Socialist Unity Party) Central Committee. Scholz belonged to the Stamokap wing, State Monopoly Capitalism… the dimension of the problem concerns the actual surveillance of Olaf Scholz in West Germany. Seven or more West German citizens under the aliases ‘Kugel,’ ‘Gustav,’ ‘Giesbert,’ ‘Konrad,’ ‘Holm,’ ‘Heine’ and ‘Udo’… forwarded no less than 19 reports (to the West German authorities—editor’s note) between 1978 and 1987 on Scholz and his activity on behalf of JUSO-Hamburg…”
Ah, “Peace ! First amongst the Rights of Man! Europe, not Euroshima! (Frieden ist unser erstes Menschenrecht! Europa darf kein Euroshima werden!), such were the slogans produced for the Werder an der Havel camp, nicht wahr, Herr Kanzler?
Speaking frankly, had Olaf Scholz stuck to his anti-NATO, peacenik, communistic views his enitre life – like the unrepentant Rainer Rupp, ex-spy, now a militant essayist—whether one agreed or not, one would have simply shrugged one’s shoulders and said “at least he’s coherent.”
And Scholz would never have become mayor of Hamburg, then finance minister, and now soon to be ex-chancellor, but a Potsdam Town Councillor. Hence the joke doing the rounds when Scholz turned his coat: Es ist Schmolz—der Scholz is geschmolzen—Scholz has liquified.
But for Scholz to have liquified, geschmolzen, to the point of applauding an act of war by the US against his own country, of agitating for injecting experimental gene therapy into his own population, of appointing as Foreign Minister an individual, Miss Baerbock, whose vulgarity, ignorance and recklessness beggars belief, of actively pressing for Operation Barbarossa II… there had to be either a carrot or a big stick at the other end. Given the implications of the CumEx affair, it looks rather like the big stick.
Whatever is this “CumEx” business, the maelstrom down which Scholz and Co. will eventually no doubt vanish? According to the specialized site FinanzWende, which has been tracking Olaf Scholz’ role from the word go, CumEx refers to a series of share-deals effected with the sole purpose of tricking the tax authorities into refunding (unpaid) taxes several times over to a chain of players, linked by an underground network.
Share-bundles are bought and sold in swift succession close to the dividend due-date, with (cum) or without (ex) dividend-entitlement. As the deal-wheel spins swiftly, the real share-holder at any one time is unclear to the tax authorities; they end up refunding capital gains tax to all the players who then divvy up the loot.
CumCum deals are similar: these enable foreign shareholders to draw tax refunds in Germany, a thing normally forbidden. Which is why one finds the Hamburg lawyer Hanno Berger, plying that trade from Switzerland, or Freshfields Germany partners, or the Canadian Maple Bank, all with their fingers in the pie.
Via a judgment handed down on December 15, 1999, the Federal Finance Court (Bundesfinanzhof) had carelessly opened a breach for such deals, by holding that for tax purposes, a single share might have two owners, with property passing to the buyer at the time of the sale despite the share still being “in the hands” of the vendor. In late December 2002, the German Bank Association (Bundesverband deutscher Banken) wrote to the Finance Ministry about CumEx, to suggest that legislation be designed to mitigate liability for the banks involved. The argument then bandied about was that CumEx/CumCum was a tax loophole rather than a criminal scheme to defraud the tax authorities.
From that point on the CumEx/CumCum merry-go-round took off: over a period of roughly fiften years Germany was cheated of about 10 billion Euro tax revenue through CumEx deals and roughly 28 billion through CumCum. On the European level, the losses in tax revenue for the various countries have been estimated at roughly environ 150 billion Euro.
As it happens, the German authorities were tipped off to the scam early on. According to Finanzwende, between 2005 and 2007 a whistleblower contacted BaFin (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, the banking oversight agency), in vain. In 2007, “alarm bells rang in the Finance Ministry: a whistleblower reported that CumEx deals were taking on monstrous proportions … nevertheless, the Ministry neither sent the oversight agencies into the banks, nor ordered a freeze on all federal tax refunds from the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern, nor alerted the Prosecution Service.
There would be much, much more to say. Plainly, by no later than 2007 not a single political or financial figure in Germany could have been unaware of the fact that THE far more profitable CumEx and CumCum deals had come to replace “plain vanilla” banking, that the gamers were making at least 20 % on such deals, and that the tax base was being looted. By 2012, official investigations and legal proceedings both civil and criminal were underway in several Länder, especially in Cologne where officials were notably diligent; by 2014 Landesbank Baden-Württemberg for example, agreed with to the tax agents to return 150 million Euro in undue refunds.
In January 2016, the Cologne Prosecutor launched an enquiry into Warburg Bank at Hamburg (150 million Euro at stake), and February 2016, a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into CumEx was set up.
Under such circumstances—and the publicly-available documentation on CumEx/CumCum runs into the thousands of pages of which we have been able to read only a fraction—there can be no doubt whatsoever that Olaf Scholz, whether as Mayor of Hamburg (2011-2017), or Federal Finance Minister (2018-2019), was well aware that a major scam was afoot.
By some quirk of fate, Die Akte Scholz (The Scholz File), a study by investigative reporters Oliver Schröm and Oliver Hollenstein, appeared only a few days after the Nord Stream blast (September 26, 2022); the book picked up from leads in the impounded private journal of Warburg’s Hamburg boss Christian Olearius. For a pitiless and quite thorough summary of events as related in Die Akte Scholz, see this three part video by young German financer Kolja Barghoorn:
Founded in the late 18th Century, the Warburg Bank, although with tentacles extending worldwide (Paul Warburg was amongst the Federal Reserve’s founders in 1913), holds the splendid city of Hamburg, all very prim, proper and Lutheran, in its grip. As for Christian Olearius, who in 40 years multiplied the bank’s turnover by five, nothing stirred in Hamburg without him, lastly but not leastly CumEx deals for its notables.
“Warburg’s Using the Threat of Bankruptcy”
In 2016 and 2017 Scholz, then Mayor of Hamburg, thrice received Christian Olearius and Max Warburg at Town Hall, although investigators were already engaged in a CumEx tax-fraud enquiry against Olearius.
Whilst elsewhere in Germany, the tax authorities and prosecutors were tearing hither and thither, striving to shut down the CumEx scam, nothing of the sort occured at Hamburg. There, the tax people, led by the mysterious Svenja Pannhusen (all trace of her seems to have vanished from the Internet) not only declined to chase up the Warburg Bank for refunds, but made so free as to disclose civil servants’ OTR musings to the bank. Scholz himself apparently suggested the following, terribly original argument to the tax office: “Warburg is Too Big to Fail. And is threatening to go bankrupt (Existenzgefaehrdung)”. According to Die Akte Scholz, then-Mayor Scholz told Olearius of his exchanges with Svenja Pannhusen and the Hamburg Finance Senator, the interesting Peter Tschentscher who was to take over from Scholz as Mayor in 2018.
And thus we have the Hamburg tax authorities letting Warburg’s CumEx shenanigans slide right up to – you guessed it – the Statute of Limitations (December 2016, 47 million Euro time-barred, just in time for a Warburg Christmas). But, Perfection being Not of this World, not even in the Warburg World, the Federal Ministry of Finance, deaf to screams of protest from the Hamburg tax office, managed to file a demand for 42 million Euro in tax refunds from Warburg, just before the cut-off date in late 2017.
Amongst the truly strange Machers, as we say in Yiddisch, tugging strings in the environment, one stumbles upon the man who may be Olaf Scholz’ actual controller, a certain Colonel Alfons Pawelczyk; in 2021, he was raided by the Cologne authorities, again in relation to CumEx, Warburg and Scholz.
Defense Industry Boring into the Woodwork?
Whilst Scholz was still Mayor, his party, the Hamburg SPD, is known to have taken 45,000 Euro in donations from the Warburg Bank, thanks to Pawelczyk’s good offices – tip of the iceberg? Given how much politicians cost these days? Another peculiar Macher in Scholz’ entourage is fellow SPD’er Johannes Kahrs, in tight with Warburg and with defense industry figures. In 2022, CumEx investigators from Cologne (them-thar pests again!) cracked open one of Kahrs’ strong-boxes, only to find banknotes in the amount of 218,000 Euro, the origin of which Kahrs has not yet cared to explain.
In the USA, lying to the US Congress or Senate is an offence (perjury), for which in theory punishment is severe. Funny. Perjury seems to worry no-one in Beautifool Germanie.
Indeed, since 2020, Olaf Scholz has had to appear before the Hamburg Town Council, known as the Bürgerschaft (2021, 2022), and before the Federal Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry (2020, 2023). As some of these hearings took place behind closed doors, there is doubtless much of which we are unaware.
Be that as it may, and going by a report that appeared on 16th January 2023, Scholz was economical with the truth before the Parliamentary Commission. Minutes of a Commission session held in July 2020, initially kept secret (Why?), have just appeared. Amongst the many inconsistencies, one learns that in July 2020 Scholz was able to bring to mind a conversation with Christian Olearius of Warburg, of which he had, however, lost “all concrete recollection” by September 2020. Cat got his tongue? N’other joke doing the rounds of Lutherania: CumEx Lingus.
At the time of writing, despite the dismal delays and lack of expert investigators, 1500 individuals and 130 banks are being prosecuted at various levels in the CumEx/CumCum affair. Bearing in mind that this is by far the most serious looting operation against the German taxpayer, and one that carried on merrily for over 15years, one can only be bewildered by the German authorities’ forbearance, compared to the unprecedented armed raids conducted by German police, prosecutors and secret service against a gaggle of grey-bearded garden gnomes going by the name of “Reichsbuerger” in December 2022. That said—Rejoice! Retro-engineering the truth, Andromeda Yacht style should pose no problem to Chancellor Scholz.
Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.