After being grilled by a committee on his potential role in a huge tax fraud scam that cost the government billions, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insists that he had been exonerated. Scholz had testified for the second time to the parliamentary committee in Hamburg, which is probing whether local political figures helped a bank to avoid paying back falsely claimed tax rebates. Scholz was the mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 and has lately been repeatedly forced to beat back allegations he was involved in the decision to let the bank off the hook. The hearing on Friday had produced a "clear conclusion", Scholz says in a closing statement to the press: "There is nothing there. There was no influence." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES