The chief investigator in Germany's cum-ex tax fraud scandal, Anne Brorhilker, has resigned and criticized the handling of the case.
Brorhilker has asked to be dismissed from her position as a civil servant, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Cologne said on Monday in response to a dpa inquiry.
The authority did not comment on Brorhilker's reasons. The senior public prosecutor played a central role in the prosecution of cum-ex tax fraudsters.
Brorhilker told German broadcaster WDR: "I have always put my heart and soul into being a public prosecutor, especially in the area of white-collar crime, but I am not at all satisfied with the way financial crime is prosecuted in Germany."
Eleven years after the first cum-ex cases came to light, politicians have still not reacted sufficiently, she said.
Tax thefts have not been stopped for a long time and there are cum-ex successor models, she said, pointing to a lack of checks on what is happening at banks and on the stock markets.
Under Brorhilker's leadership, around 1,700 suspects were investigated in about 120 cum-ex proceedings in Cologne.
In cum-ex deals, which had their heyday between 2006 and 2011, investors had unpaid capital gains tax refunded by swapping shares with (cum) and without (ex) dividend entitlements back and forth.
In total, the deals defrauded the German government of an estimated €10 billion or more.
The cum-ex fraud is considered the biggest tax scandal in Germany.