German tax probe nets $41M, 163 people

Berlin, Germany (AP) -- A wide-ranging investigation of tax evasion by Germans stashing their money abroad has led to the recovery of about $41.2 million and has netted 163 people, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Speaking briefly to reporters in Bochum, Hans-Ulrich Krueck said that so far 91 people targeted in the investigation "have admitted to the facts," and had already made payments totaling 27.8 million euros.

"At the moment, that sum is rising daily," Krueck said.

Another 72 people have turned themselves in to tax authorities, he said.

Krueck did not name any names or say what they did for a living, a marked contrast from the week before last, when ex-Deutsche Post chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel had his house raided as scores of television cameras recorded the scene.

German tax officials and prosecutors have conducted a series of raids up and down the country this month after the government paid an informant 4.2 million euros ($6.2 million) for a CD-ROM believed to contain the names of hundreds of alleged tax cheats, many of them Germans.

"Many searches were carried out last week across Germany against 150 suspects in connection with the investigation of 120 cases of tax evasion in connection with foundations in Liechtenstein," he said.

Krueck said that the foundations checked so far in the alpine principality had "capital of well over 200 million euros," which is worth about $296 million.

"Through the concealment of this capital and the returns that therefore were omitted, taxes were evaded on an immense scale," he said. He did not give a specific figure. E-mail to a friend

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