Germany: Pressure grows on Scholz over tax scam ties

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s main opposition party has called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to explain his role in a large-scale tax evasion scam while he was mayor of Hamburg. Scholz has been dogged by questions about meetings he had with private bank M.M. Warburg in 2016 and 2017. Hamburg officials later dropped demands for the bank to repay millions of dollars in tax refunds it had wrongly claimed for share trades. Scholz has denied wrongdoing and claimed not to recall details of his meetings with Warburg. But the center-right Christian Democrats say recent revelations about 200,000 euros in cash being found in a safe belonging to a close party associate of Scholz raise further questions about the cum-ex affair.