interview
It is difficult for countries to catch big tax fraudsters. There’s a system behind it, former public prosecutor Brorhilker said in an interview tagesschau.de. The country is weak here.
The CumEx transaction is considered the largest tax fraud in German history. Behind this are illegal stock transactions carried out by a group of bankers, lawyers and other financial market players who enrich themselves at the expense of the state. Between 2001 and 2011, the perpetrators several times requested capital gains tax refunds under the pretext of “legal loopholes” – taxes that had not been previously paid. The losses are estimated at ten billion euros.
Public prosecutor Anne Borhilker played an important role in solving several cases. Their investigation resulted in the first verdict in the CumEx tax fraud scandal. In his recently published book entitled: “CumEx, Billions and Morals” he describes the difficulties in fighting economic crime and suggests possible solutions.
For people
Anne Brorhilker worked in the Cologne prosecutor’s office for more than two decades. As a senior public prosecutor, he investigated CumEx perpetrators and obtained numerous legally binding verdicts. In April 2024 he asked to be released from civil service. He is currently a board member of the citizens’ movement Finanzwende eV and heads the financial crimes department.
“Major damage”
tagesschau.de: What motivated you personally to leave civil service?
Anne Brorhilker: I have always enjoyed being a prosecutor, but I have noticed that in the field of white collar crime, it is most difficult to hold perpetrators accountable. And that includes tax avoidance. The country is very weak at the moment and is faced with a very incomplete financial sector. This is a fatal imbalance of power.
tagesschau.de: What does this cause?
Brohilker: The result is that the authorities can handle the small fish quite well, but the big fish, namely cases with very large amounts of damage such as CumEx, are difficult to handle with the current structure.
This causes huge losses to all of us, honest taxpayers. It is also detrimental to the economy as a whole and also undermines confidence in the functioning of the constitutional state if the law cannot be enforced equally. Yes, and I would like to change all this because I just observed during the investigation that this is the case.
The justice system has its limits
tagesschau.de: As a senior public prosecutor, you investigated CumEx perpetrators for more than ten years and won numerous legally binding verdicts.
Brohilker: But as a prosecutor, my role is not to change the system; instead, I was responsible for individual cases, namely bringing the perpetrators to justice. But I just realized how much effort was involved and that the structure needed to be changed urgently.
And now I can denounce this in my current role in the Finanzwende citizens’ movement. I can speak openly about such issues. I can also suggest solutions and, together with many members of civil society, create the necessary pressure to bring about the necessary changes.
tagesschau.de: Can you give us an example of how the judiciary faces very tight restrictions?
Brohilker: Especially the CumEx cases, they are very extensive, very complex and also take a long time to investigate. This is due, for example, to the fact that all the actors and all the documents are abroad. And it is very difficult for the German authorities to carry out investigations outside German territory.
This is of course a problem because economic crimes usually cross national borders. It was a tremendous effort to complete the investigation, file charges and obtain a verdict. But this doesn’t have to be the case, because the structure can be changed.
“Truly professional and full of conspiracies”
tagesschau.de: Let’s take a closer look at the CumEx scam – how could this system have worked for so many years?
Brohilker: This is because the crime was hidden very professionally. The industry acts both completely professional and highly conspiratorial. The perpetrators chose complex foreign structures and sometimes even outright deceived the authorities. When these cases were discovered by the authorities, there was enormous resistance. All this makes the investigation very difficult.
tagesschau.de: And at the same time there was a lot of lobbying going on, you say?
Brohilker: Many false narratives are spread in public spaces, including in the media, causing this problem to be underestimated. As a result, it is greatly underestimated by political decision makers and also by society. For a long time, these narratives were not questioned. That’s why it went undetected for so long.
White collar criminal with a wide cross
tagesschau.de: How much pressure were you under during the investigation?
Brohilker: I faced a huge backlash, not only me, but also all my colleagues involved in it. This begins by exhausting all possible legal remedies. But there have also been surveillance complaints and criminal charges. And recently, over the years, this has often been accompanied by media campaigns.
Today, white collar criminals not only have expensive lawyers with entire teams behind them, but they are also advised to hire a PR manager. You can actually see it on the websites of top law firms. At the same time, a media campaign was launched to discredit the investigators and the investigation as a whole. This makes investigations difficult.
tagesschau.de: Why is it difficult for countries to ask for money back? Is that possible?
Brohilker: Yes, of course it is possible, it has happened. We have taken several steps in clarifying CumEx. The two perpetrators have been sent to prison and 3.1 billion euros have been asked for back. That may sound like a lot, but considering the total damage is estimated at at least ten billion euros, that’s about a third. So there is still a lot of room for improvement.
“NO work one knowledge management”
tagesschau.de: Why is that? Do we need stricter laws?
Brohilker: We actually have pretty good laws, that’s not the reason at all. Even though it is always said that there are loopholes in the law, in reality this is not the case. However, we have a problem because with the current administrative conditions, we are only able to implement this law at a very limited level. It is a problem to find these cases and then handle these very lengthy investigations and clarifications with currently available resources.
tagesschau.de: What structural deficiencies have you noticed among the authorities?
Brohilker: They have too few staff, they have almost no time to develop specialist skills, but on the other hand, they are of course faced with a highly specialized industry. That’s a problem. There is almost no network between authorities, because we have a federal system in Germany.
You have to imagine it like this: there are a lot of civil servants sitting all over the place in their offices and rarely talking to each other. So we don’t have working knowledge management at all. We face all these structural problems not only in the prosecutor’s office, but also in the police and tax investigation departments in the field of financial administration. This means that we – until now – have had great difficulty handling these large cases.
Stefan Wolff held a conversation about the Economic Update program on November 20 2025 at 09.05.
