Neat breakdown.
case 3) is - as you said - obviously fraudulent, I would never believe Amazon would be stupid enough to attempt something like this.
case 2), while not actually fraudulent in relation to the tax thing, is highly unlikely I guess, since the shares "given" to the employees on a certain date would have to exist "at this point in time", otherwise it would be kind of fraudulent towrds the the employee (unless the summary somehow was not accurate concerning the shares)

=> I think we need to assume 1)

Thus, the share thing and the rising share price has nothing to do with the declining tax.

Is it April somewhere already?

What kind of summary/ story is this? This was only the executive summary. We want to know what systems the stuff runs on, what programming languages are used; you know, the geek stuff!

Friedelumurr Gieselheart

??
Does not sound German in my ear. Maybe scandinavian (a Danish name crossed with something British).

You are correct of course. Additionally, we have quite a number of italian immigrants, who came in the time of the "Wirtschaftswunder" (50s - 70s). Plus, a sizeable chunk of science in Europe is done where various institutions in different countries work together.

Yes! Time to start a political movement to get this fixed! It's all the same up to isomorphisms anyhoo.