Top EU banks guilty of multi-billion tax fraud
Spain's top lender accused by German prosecutor of "severe tax evasion" (Photo: Can Pac Swire)
Tax-scams operated by the EU's top banks cost treasuries €55.2bn, a cross-border investigation has shown.
The scams, dubbed "the biggest tax robbery in European history", involved Deutsche Bank and Santander - the largest lenders in Germany and Spain.
Deutsche Bank also handled billions of illicit Russian funds (Photo: Bjoern Laczay)
They also involved Germany's Commerzbank, Hypovereinsbank, Landesbanken, and Warburg Bank, British lender Barclays, French bank BNP Paribas, and global banks JPMorgan, Meryll Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.
The scams worked via so-called "cum-ex" buying of shares and bonds.
The latin term, which means with-without, is jargon for a kind of trade that enables banks to conceal the identities of their clients.
This, in turn, helps the clients to claim false, double, or multiple tax rebates of capital gains tax paid on the anonymous trades.
The fraud cost German taxpayers €31.8bn between 2001 and 2016, the investigation estimated. It cost France €17bn, Italy €4.5bn, and Denmark €1.7bn. It also harmed Austria, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, and Spa. EU Obs.
