Olaf Scholz faces fresh scrutiny over allegations that he was responsible for waiving a multimillion-euro tax bill for a private bank involved in a tax fraud scheme, as the German chancellor struggles to shake off links to alleged local government sleaze from his stint as mayor of Hamburg.
On Tuesday it emerged that prosecutors investigating illegal so-called “cum-ex” trades have spent the last few months raking over Scholz’s emails from when he governed the prosperous northern city-state between 2011 and 2018.