Walking a Fine Line – A Contextual Perspective on the Purchase of “Stolen” Banking Data by German Authorities

On 14 February 2008, German prosecutors and investigative authorities made a sensational catch. That day, it became public that they had initiated criminal investigations against Klaus Zumwinkel, then head of the DAX-listed corporation Deutsche Post. Additionally, the top manager's villa in Cologne was searched in a dawn raid and, as the media apparently had been tipped off, TV cameras could film the corporate executive while accompanied out of his home by prosecutor Margit Lichtinghagen. About one year later, Zumwinkel, no longer head of Deutsche Post, was convicted of tax evasion to two years of prison placed on probation. Although hailed by many as a triumph for the prosecution of white-collar crimes and the fight against corporate executives' recklessness, some already questioned the approach of prosecutors and investigators in the early stages. This criticism first and foremost referred to the fact that important information used as evidence in the investigations as well as the subsequent criminal court proceedings stemmed from banking data “stolen” by a Liechtenstein banker from his (former) employer Liechtenstein Global Trust, a bank based in Liechtenstein, and subsequently purchased by German authorities. This phenomenon, the purchase of “stolen banking data by German authorities, was not unprecedented as the so called “Liechtenstein tax affair” (“Liechtensteinische Steueraffäre”) had already been going on for some time. Zumwinkel, however, was the first widely known defendant in that context.