(Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Boerse AG’s Clearstream unit, the central settlement agent for trading in German shares, was sued for about 27 million euros ($29 million) by the administrator of defunct Maple Bank in a lawsuit linked to the Cum-Ex tax scandal.

The suit is pending at the Frankfurt Regional Court, a spokeswoman for the tribunal confirmed, in response to questions from Bloomberg News. The case, which was filed last year, is also seeking a declaratory ruling that Clearstream must cover potential additional damages, she said. No hearing has yet been scheduled. She declined to give further details about the plaintiff’s claim.

Maple Bank was raided by prosecutors in 2015 as one of the multiple probes into a massive tax scam that sparked outrage in Germany. A year later, the nation’s financial regulator Bafin closed the bank because it couldn’t shoulder the bill levied by tax authorities, which asked for the return of money Maple made with Cum-Ex. The Canadian parent company went into liquidation in 2016.

A spokeswoman for Maple administrator Michael Frege declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Deutsche Boerse didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

Cum-Ex transactions took advantage of a now-abandoned method of taxing dividends, generating multiple tax refunds through a combination of short sales and share lending. In Germany, the practice ended in 2012 when the nation revised its rules, but the scam may have cost taxpayers more than 10 billion euros. German prosecutors are now probing about 1,500 people.

Since Clearstream is the depository for most shares of companies listed in Germany, it centrally settles transactions in these securities. That means virtually all Cum-Ex deals targeting the German treasury ran through its systems. 

A banker at a Bonn Cum-Ex trial said that Clearstream even had a separate account, “KD111,” to handle the so-called dividend compensation payments, a key element of Cum-Ex. Cologne prosecutors raided the unit’s offices in 2019.

If the Maple suit is successful, other financial players involved in the scam hit by hefty tax bills might copy the idea and turn to Clearstream to pick up the tab.  

The case is LG Frankfurt, 2-25 O 244/21.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.