Criminal tax fraud and evasion in international financial transactions

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) dismissed the revision of the first defendant as unfounded and dismissed the revision of the second defendant with a correction to the conviction, upholding the trial court's judgment of 18 October 2024 with regard to the substantive outcome while adjusting the legal characterization of the second defendant’s conduct to aiding and abetting banded drug dealing with cannabis in six cases and aiding and abetting drug dealing with cannabis. The dispute involved criminal appeals against convictions for drug trafficking offenses, challenging the underlying criminal liability and classification of the defendants' actions. The decisive legal basis was the finding that the trial court committed no legal errors to the detriment of the first defendant, while for the second defendant, the Court clarified the specific scope of accomplice liability under German criminal law for banded cannabis dealing, resulting in a partial recharacterization of the guilty verdict without altering the overall rejection of the appeals.