Still, he spent much of 2011 working on a way to bring in U.S. pension funds, the only alternative left to salvage the transactions, he said.
But by that time, Berger and Frey started to feel the pressure from tax authorities. The turning point for Frey came in 2014 when he became a suspect in the Cologne probe. One morning at 6 a.m., police knocked on the door of his house in Zurich.
“There was my wife holding our 1 1/2-year-old child in her arms,” watching their home being raided, Frey said. “Then it became clear to me that something was very wrong.”
Since then Cum-Ex probes have mushroomed throughout Germany with prosecutors in five cities investigating some 500 suspects. In Cologne alone, more than 50 separate probes are pending.
But even before the German crackdown, some people knew Cum-Ex might not be proper. Frey recounted a meeting at the law firm in Frankfurt, where Berger told young attorneys:
“Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built, here’s the door,” Frey recalled in court. Berger didn’t dispute the account, but he said it was a way of saying that lawyers have a duty to show clients all their options under the law, and to help them make use of them.
Last year in his TV interview, Frey said he had returned the 50 million euros to German authorities. Then in court last week, he admitted that this wasn’t accurate. He explained that the interview was taped in March 2018 and he knew it would be aired only in October.
“I thought I would have paid back the money by then,” he said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.