200,000 euros in the closet: The discovery of money from an SPD man also puts Chancellor Olaf Scholz in danger. Scholz defended himself in the Cum-Ex case on Thursday. But Scholz also has memory failures that are annoying.
Vienna/Berlin. On the banks of the Spree in Berlin, at the home of the federal press conference, a debut took place on Thursday: Olaf Scholz held his first summer press conference as chancellor. The format is traditional. Angela Merkel used it in 2015 for her most famous line: “We can do this!” Scholz also composed and lent a phrase in these weeks. It is in English and is an anthem and is intended to assure inflated Germans of government support: “You will never walk alone.” The past is also catching up with the chancellor. The cum-ex affair from his days as mayor of Hamburg haunts him. Recently, it became public that the Public Prosecutor’s Office discovered 214,800 euros in a locker belonging to Johannes Kahrs, a former SPD member of the Bundestag in Hamburg.
The finding is surprising: the Republic is puzzled whether the money is related to the Cum-Ex case in Hamburg and, if so, whether Scholz himself could have been involved. Scholz will be asked on Thursday what he knows about the money in the closet. He smiled. You know that, Scholz likes to smile at attacks. “Nothing,” he says. What could the money have been for? “I have no idea – I suppose you know more than I do.” Scholz stubbornly reacted to further questions about the cause. The case makes him uncomfortable. You can say.