After being sentenced to eight years in prison, cum-ex architect Hanno Berger wants to go to the Federal Court of Justice. The 72-year-old said that he would appeal, the Bonn district court said on Wednesday morning on request. After delivery of the written judgment, he has one month to justify the appeal.
Last week, the district court sentenced Berger to prison for particularly serious tax evasion in three cases between 2007 and 2011. The court estimated the tax damage of these three cases at 276 million euros. Berger received 13.7 million euros, which he has to repay.
The 72-year-old was a driving force in the share deals, in which financial players staged a confusion about the dividend record date and the tax authorities reimbursed unpaid taxes. The tax lawyer Berger advised banks and mediated investors in order to get large loans with their capital and then be able to invest a lot of money in the cum-ex deals. Another case is pending before the Wiesbaden district court against Berger in connection with the Cum-Ex scandal.
When the verdict was announced in Bonn, the presiding judge, Roland Zickler, suggested that the accused should consider not appealing. The judge pointed out a paragraph in the Code of Criminal Procedure, according to which a judgment from one criminal case could have a mitigating effect on another case – even the termination of the other case would then be possible. However, this presupposes that the judgment from the first procedure is final.
After the Bonn verdict, Berger’s lawyer Richard Beyer said that in relation to the court’s findings, the verdict was a guilty verdict “which must definitely be regarded as guilt and punishment.”
