Germany Obtains Wealth of Tax Data from Dubai

German authorities have obtained a wealth of tax data from Dubai, said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. The data is a great resource for curbing tax crimes.

 

“Tax evasion is not a trivial offence, but a criminal act,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin on Friday. “We will not tolerate this.” He did not provide details on how the data was obtained.

The central federal tax office reportedly paid about 2 million euros to buy the data from an anonymous source, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported. German state governments have made similar purchases before to fight tax fraud.

The former finance minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Norbert Walter-Borjans, started buying CDs containing data from Switzerland in 2010 to tackle tax fraud. The practice sparked a spate of disclosures in Germany and raids on Swiss banks and their customers.