About the work
“Der Tag, an dem ich Cum/Ex verstand” (roughly “The Day I Understood Cum/Ex”) is a new play by Traudl Bünger and Calle Fuhr. Bünger had previously co-written the non-fiction book “Cum/Ex, Milliarden und Moral” (2025) with Anne Brorhilker, the former senior public prosecutor in Cologne; Fuhr made his name with research-based theatre on economic subjects. The world premiere is scheduled for 4 June 2027 at Schauspiel Köln, directed by Calle Fuhr.
Plot
The play deals with the cum-ex scandal, in which banks, advisers and investors had the state refund capital gains tax several times over for years, although it had been paid only once. At its centre is the investigation led by Cologne prosecutor Anne Brorhilker, which began in the summer of 2013 and extended to 14 countries. The evening asks how financial professionals could keep the scheme running for so long, why the authorities ran up against their own limits in pursuing it, and what the losses mean for the public.
Cultural significance
Since 2019, German media have described cum-ex as the biggest tax scandal in the history of the Federal Republic; in 2021 the Federal Court of Justice ruled that such trades are criminal tax evasion. Brorhilker left the public prosecution service in 2024, citing doubts about the political will to clear up the scandal, and joined the citizens’ movement Finanzwende.