The Federal Republic of Germany may have lost around EUR 32 billion since 2001 as a consequence of the activities of forty German banks and a range of foreign institutions using practices that were at best unethical and at worst illegal, according to research conducted by Christoph Spengel, an academic at Mannheim University, which he made available to Die Zeit, a newspaper, and ARD, a broadcaster.

If true this would be the biggest scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, say media reports.

Subsequent investigations conducted by German investigative journalists claim to have found evidence o...