Schwerin (dpa/mv) - In the affair about tax files of the controversial climate foundation MV, the state government is no longer bound by tax secrecy and can therefore put all its cards on the table. As the foundation's board of directors announced in Schwerin on Tuesday, it granted the foundation its "complete, unrestricted exemption from tax secrecy with regard to all files on the gift tax case kept in the Ribnitz-Damgarten tax office and in the Ministry of Finance".
The board of directors has thus complied with a request from Finance Minister Heiko Geue (SPD) and welcomes his intention to create complete transparency, the short message said. The opposition in the state parliament had accused the state government of wanting to cover up the case and enforcing a special session of the finance and legal committee this Friday.
The foundation, which was set up by the state government to complete the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea while circumventing threatened US sanctions, has been heavily criticized since it was founded in early 2021. Last week, a report about the burning of the foundation's tax files by an official from the Ribnitz-Damgarten tax office made headlines. The case concerned gift taxes on 20 million euros in capital that Nord Stream 2 had paid to the foundation. The documents were subsequently requested and finally a notice of 9.8 million euros in gift tax was issued. On the other hand, the Climate Foundation went before the Financial Court of Greifswald. The procedure is still ongoing.
Meanwhile, the pressure on the state government led by Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) continues to grow. According to a report by "Bild" on Tuesday, the network of companies that completed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the protection of the foundation also included the subsidiary of a US company specializing in pipeline construction and a Hamburg company. Schwesig, on the other hand, justified the founding of the state foundation with the aim of protecting local companies involved in the completion of the pipeline from impending US sanctions. The separate business part of the foundation had concluded contracts with companies for a total of 165 million euros for the further construction of Nord Stream 2. The pipeline did not go into operation because of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
