The questions and doubts – and thus also the justifiable suspicions – have increased in the Cum-Ex scandal. Not only in relation to Scholz, but also with regard to the big parties. The CDU now wants to do educational work.

To ask the frivolous question of Olaf Scholz’s resignation in the Warburg affair today would be to put the reins on the horse. That would not do either the horse or the rider any good. The anatomy of the horse does not allow for such gimmicks.

The anatomy of power is very similar, especially in a constitutional state. To stay with the metaphor, you don’t just need doubts and suspicions, but evidence if you want to unseat a real head of government.

Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.

But the questions and doubts – and thus also the justifiable suspicions – have increased in the past few days. Not only in relation to Scholz, but also with regard to the big parties. This is where the mission of the free press begins.

The fact that the ARD has not been able to pull itself together to present a focal point program in the event of this biggest tax scandal should not be taken as discouragement but as an invitation.

Mind you: As a request not to denunciation, but to research. Journalism is nothing more and nothing less than a method of approximating reality.

And the reality in the tax fraud republic of Germany is one that goes beyond the Hamburg private institute founded in 1798 by the brothers Moses Marcus Warburg and Gerson Warburg. Or, to put it worse, smells out.

When it comes to cum-ex, things are stinky at the finest addresses – and also at the state. Here are the three undeniable facts:

1. All major banks have directly enriched themselves with these tax tricks or organized them on behalf of their customers – as so-called custodian banks. There was not one black sheep, but a whole flock of black sheep ran through Europe.

2. Using a kind of carousel principle, investors always move the same shares around the key dates for dividend distribution in order to receive a refund several times on the capital gains tax that is then due, since the profits have already been taxed abroad.

The tax office loses track, in the end taxes are refunded that were not paid at all. It was madness – madness with a method. At least 36 billion euros – this corresponds to the complete budget for this year of the Federal Minister for Digital Affairs and Transport – escaped the tax authorities in Germany alone.

3. The major state banks such as North Rhine-Westphalia’s WestLB and Hamburg’s HSH Nordbank were also involved. In isolated cases, additional tax payments have already been made – but only very selectively.

The role of the ultimate political leaders of these banks – in Hamburg also the Mayor Olaf Scholz and his Finance Senator Peter Tschentscher as well as in North Rhine-Westphalia the Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft with her finance minister and then Chairman of the Supervisory Board of WestLB Norbert Walter-Borjans – has so far remained largely unnoticed.

This is where the opposition party CDU comes in. She does not want and must not be satisfied with the dry statements of the chancellor and the memory gaps of the former mayor of Hamburg.

And if the lawyer Scholz, who of course has long known what the hour has struck, can’t be proven anything, they want to examine the SPD as a whole. The opposition roles in Hamburg and the government responsibility in NRW are very helpful for this, as is now being shown.

In Düsseldorf, they want to come to terms with the gloomy past of WestLB – for many years the home power of social democracy before the bank was broken up into three parts on June 30, 2012 under SPD regent Kraft.

In the recently signed coalition agreement “Future Contract for North Rhine-Westphalia” between the CDU and the Greens, cum-ex deals and organized crime are deliberately equated.

There it says: “We will resolutely fight and deal with crimes such as cum-ex/cum-cum, sales tax fraud and organized crime and skim off incriminated assets. We will clarify the role of the former WestLB in the cum-ex scandal.”

What the CDU can do in North Rhine-Westphalia, it has been able to do in Hamburg for a long time. So, at the instigation of the conservatives there, the mandate of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the “Cum-Ex tax money affair” was extended without further ado next Friday.

The application states: “During the course of the hearing of evidence by the committee of inquiry, it became clear that the unusual approach of the Hamburg Senate, the tax authorities and the tax administration not only affected the Warburg Group, but other cases beyond the Warburg case.”

CDU faction leader Dennis Thering gives the chief investigator: “Now everything has to be on the table.” In addition to the Warburg Bank, the HSH Nordbank in particular should be targeted, whose involvement in the Cum-Ex scandal is known, but not the extent .

Because, as the CDU application says: “Unlike the public prosecutor’s offices in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Munich, no investigative actions took place at the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office.”

The party-politically motivated investigators feel encouraged by the first findings of the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, as they themselves write: “An initial inspection of a file from the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, which the investigative committee has had for a few days, yielded clear indications that Olaf Scholz, Dr. Peter Tschentscher and other witnesses from the tax administration were involved early on in tax and criminal law issues relating to abusive share transactions around the dividend record date at HSH Nordbank.”

Behind this is the suspicion that Olaf Scholz and his tax authorities do not favor the Warburg Bank at all, but want to take the SPD and the head of the state bank out of the line of fire.

Christian Olearius, the man at Warburg Bank, had repeatedly pointed out in his talks with Scholz that he was not an isolated case in Hamburg and that an example was being made of him.

Conclusion: The move by the CDU – even if it damages its own CDU mayors in Hamburg and the former CDU prime ministers in Düsseldorf – is smart in terms of party politics and politically necessary. Perhaps Olaf Scholz should give the whole story for the first time on Friday before the investigative committee and not just his scraps of memory designed by lawyers.

The electorate does not want to overthrow its chancellor, only to understand. Scholz did not fail, but had to give reasons. The experimental physicist and writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg would certainly have advised the taciturn SPD man to be as open as possible: “Truthfulness is the greatest cunning.”