BERLIN, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- German investigators of the public prosecution office searched rooms of the world's largest asset management company BlackRock in Munich, the newspaper BILD reported on Tuesday.
According to BILD, up to 20 investigators screened the offices of BlackRock for material relating to "Cum-Ex" transactions.
In response to a request by BILD, the company stated that "BlackRock is fully cooperating with the investigating authorities in an ongoing investigation into Cum-Ex transactions between 2007 and 2011".
German tax authorities have suffered losses of billions of euros as a result "cum-ex" tax deals that are now illegal, according to local media reports.
The deals had allowed owners of shares to claim several times over refund for tax paid only once on dividend payouts, according to German media.
Friedrich Merz, a candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has been head of the American investment company's supervisory board since 2016.
Last week, Merz distanced himself in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung from tax frauds.
"Share transactions like cum-ex and cum-cum are ultimately used to fleece taxpayers," Merz told the newspaper. Such deals would be absolutely immoral, independently of the juridical evaluation.
