Balance of the Wirecard U Committee Is Scholz complicit?

Status: 06/22/2021 5:00 p.m.

The Wirecard committee of inquiry presented its report one year after the accounting scandal became known. But who is politically responsible remains open. The opposition and the Union accuse Finance Minister Scholz. For years the Wirecard Group has been highly praised – an innovative business model, a fantastic sales development, the hope in the Dax. And then almost two billion euros disappeared from the balance sheet practically overnight. “It is a criminal case,” says Matthias Hauer, chairman of the Union in the committee of inquiry. And after seven months of studying the files and questioning witnesses, it is clear that the Union is primarily responsible for the bankruptcy of billions: “Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and the management of the Federal Ministry of Finance bear political responsibility for the Wirecard scandal,” said Hauer. They knowingly looked the other way when the rumors about irregularities in the Wirecard management made the rounds. Fabio de Masi from the Left puts it even more drastically: “This billions of dollars lie, this Wirecard illusion factory was only conceivable because they organized a political network to hide the fact that there wasn’t much substance under the covers. “ De Masi recalled the countless investors who would have lost a total of more than 20 billion euros in share assets due to the Wirecard bankruptcy.

Opposition demands political consequences

Florian Toncar from the FDP also thinks that someone from politics should have apologized to the injured party: “I think it is a major annoyance for many citizens that in the end there is no one in such scandals who will also stand up admits his own mistakes. ”

But back to Olaf Scholz. As a witness in the committee of inquiry, he had considerable gaps in memory, complained the spokesman for the Union and opposition parties. Lisa Paus from the Greens thinks that Olaf Scholz did not exactly recommend himself as a candidate for Chancellor: “I think that especially in these times Germany needs a leader who can also admit mistakes. And I think that is something that Olaf Scholz is not given. ” Kay Gottschalk from the AfD was the chairman of the committee of inquiry – Union and the other opposition factions attested to having carried out the office professionally and with colleagues. In the matter he also misses political consequences at a higher level. “A minister would have resigned 20 years ago. And that is a cultural change that we are experiencing here in Germany that I do not like,” said Gottschalk.

SPD defends Scholz

And the SPD? It takes its candidate for chancellor out of the political line of fire. The allegations against Scholz are just election campaign noise, says finance politician Cansel Kiziltepe: “Olaf Scholz bears no political responsibility for the Wirecard scandal. And the allegations that have been made have not been confirmed.”

On Friday there is still a Bundestag debate on the political assessment of the scandal – then the public prosecutor has the floor. She is investigating the former management of Wirecard for, among other things, embezzlement, falsification of accounts and fraud committed by gang. It is not yet possible to foresee when there will be criminal proceedings

Wirecard scandal What’s left of the U committee

As of: 06/22/2021 9:16 a.m.

A year ago, the financial services provider Wirecard went bankrupt. A U-Committee of the Bundestag tried to find out why controllers and supervision failed. The committee has now completed its work.

From Tobias Betz, ARD capital studio

Head of authorities fired, insider trading uncovered: A reform should turn Germany’s financial supervision inside out. The committee of inquiry into the Wirecard scandal has initiated a lot. More than 100 witnesses were questioned and thousands of documents turned over.

Florian Toncar did this for the FDP: The investigative committee had come to a clear conclusion. “We made it very clear that the Wirecard case was not a natural disaster that no one could have foreseen or averted,” he says. There were hints and people who warned early on. The disturbing thing about the Wirecard case is that all of this could have happened with the eyes of sight and under the inspectors’ radar.

BaFin seal of approval?

The central accusation of the opposition: The Federal Financial Services Agency (BaFin) did not investigate early indications of possible irregularities at Wirecard. Instead, according to experts, the authority made fatal misjudgments.

BaFin was convinced that Wirecard was being blackmailed. That is why the authorities imposed a ban on the short sale of Wirecard shares in February 2019. BaFin had never before issued such a speculation ban with a single share. Many market participants understood this signal as a kind of seal of approval: You can trust Wirecard, the company is clean!

Many small investors then got on board. When the rumors that had been circulating for years about inflated balance sheets at Wirecard turned out to be true in June 2020, the share price plummeted. Wirecard was broke. Many small investors lost everything.

The minister and the chancellor had to testify

Since then, the public prosecutor has been investigating, among other things, gang fraud. Former board members were arrested and one of them, Jan Marsalek, is still on the run to this day. Because the control authorities are subordinate to ministries, the opposition’s criticism was directed at the government, says Lisa Paus, who sits on the committee of inquiry for the Greens. “Wirecard was also an auditor scandal. The supervision was under the economics minister Peter Altmaier,” says Paus. Above all, Wirecard is a broad supervisory scandal overall. “The financial supervision was under the SPD finance minister Olaf Scholz.”

Ministers Scholz and Altmaier had to testify in the committee of inquiry. Chancellor Angela Merkel was also questioned for hours. None of them admitted mistakes. On the other hand, the work of the investigative committee certainly increased the pressure on the Federal Finance Minister to completely reform the financial supervisory authority BaFin, which is subordinate to him, including a change at the top of BaFin.

Bankers lost their reputations

Financial expert Fabio De Masi from the Left Party is certain that the results of the committee of inquiry are not only politically interesting: “The auditors’ mistakes will play a role in class actions by small investors,” he says. Never before have so many heads rolled at the head of authorities in such a short time.

Authority managers, bankers, analysts, fund managers and BaFin employees – they lost their jobs, their bonuses, their reputation. These are the first concrete effects of the committee of inquiry into the Wirecard scandal. The witness chair on the investigative committee was therefore soon more feared by some than the dock in a criminal court

Committee of Inquiry Wirecard and the “Mastercard” from Commerzbank

As of: 06/09/2021 3:01 a.m.

The parliamentary groups’ final reports on the Wirecard committee of inquiry are almost ready. Nevertheless, the panel heard witnesses well into the night. It was about early information from Commerzbank. By Arne Meyer-Fünffinger and Josef Streule, BR When the Munich Chief Public Prosecutor Hildegard Bäumler-Hösl entered the “Europa Hall” in the Paul-Löbe-Haus, the Wirecard investigative committee had already spent almost nine hours of intensive witness questioning behind it. At this point in time, the committee had already questioned the head of the FIU anti-money laundering unit, Christof Schulte, and the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Rolf Bösinger – with unsurprising results. Both vigorously defended the work of the authority in connection with the Wirecard scandal. “We have no indications that the FIU would not have fulfilled its legal mandate,” emphasized Bösinger. The FIU has been standing for reporting from BR research for days again more and more criticized. In February 2019, Commerzbank submitted a detailed suspicious transaction report to the FIU – including a list of almost 350 suspicious transfers and a short report to make the FIU’s work easier. A reference to the allegations made against former Wirecard managers was not recognizable, explained Schulte and Bösinger. The FIU therefore only forwarded this suspicious activity report to the responsible criminal investigation authorities in Bavaria in July 2020, after seven foreign partner authorities had been sent “spontaneous information” in July 2019. Schulte emphasized that there has been no response from them to this day. And apart from that: “The Commerzbank report was by our standards not a particularly good report,” said the FIU boss.

Prosecutor: Commerzbank report was the “Mastercard”

The Munich public prosecutor’s witness, Chief Public Prosecutor Bäumler-Hösl, arranged the Commerzbank report completely differently when she was interrogated: “The major money laundering report from Commerzbank is the Mastercard. This is the most valuable and most extensive money laundering report. It is elementary. ” “That’s a statement,” said the committee chairman Kay Gottschalk (AfD) spontaneously. The lawyer also contradicted Bösinger and Schulte on a central point: Both had emphasized that Commerzbank’s suspicious transaction report had no reference to the German legal area. That is why the FIU did not forward this to the local authorities any faster. “What alarmed me about the report is the presentation of the facts by Commerzbank,” she said. This refers to the brief report that the bank added to the list of nearly 350 suspicious payments. In this and in the transfers listed by the Frankfurt money house, a relationship with Germany was clearly recognizable, Bäumler-Hösl made clear. With the fact that the report did not contain any reference to Germany, the FIU justified the fact that it had only informed the local authorities of this information more than a year and a half later. “All the reasons given by the Federal Ministry of Finance as to why the FIU did not initially have to pass on the suspicious transaction report have literally collapsed,” commented Florian Toncar (FDP) on the statement by the chief public prosecutor.

Wirecard suspicious activity report on a silver platter

Matthias Hauer (CDU / CSU) had already disagreed with the presentation of the FIU representative before the chief public prosecutor’s statement: “In my opinion, the silver platter is not enough, it must be made of gold.” Other experts had also classified the suspicious activity report from Commerzbank in the run-up to today’s testimony as a “silver platter” on which the bank had served the FIU with its information. The third witness in the Wirecard investigative committee, Rolf Bösinger, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, countered the accusation that he had withheld information from parliament at an earlier point in time: “These accusations are untenable. I have neither withheld information nor do I have it There is nothing to hide or to conceal. We have informed the German Bundestag and the MPs comprehensively, “he said.

Accusation of “concealment”

These statements did not make an impression on every committee member. For Lisa Paus (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) they were “not credible”, Hans Michelbach (CDU / CSU) spoke of “veiling” by the ministry even after Bösinger had been questioned for several hours. BR research had previously reported on internal mail correspondence of the FIU, according to which Bösinger is said to have influenced a dossier of the FIU accordingly. This was drawn up by the authority on the occasion of a special meeting of the finance committee on August 31, 2020. The dossier was an internal preparatory document, stressed Bösinger in front of the members of the committee of inquiry. They will now focus on completing their final reports after months of work. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble will probably receive a thick pile of papers at the end of this month.

Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has rejected complicity in the multi-billion Wirecard scandal. The former top management of the payment processor is being investigated. “Apparently there was a high level of criminal activity in the company,” said the SPD candidate for chancellor in the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the financial scandal. The auditor EY had not uncovered the errors for eleven years and always audited the balance sheets. This has been believed for too long. The federal government is not to blame for the case. Scholz said that it was acted quickly and that the right conclusions had been drawn: “I got all that on the way quickly.”

Government supervision not good enough

Scholz rejected allegations that the financial supervisory authority BaFin or the Ministry of Finance had held their protective hand over the company. He admitted, however, that the state supervisory and control structure was not well enough equipped for such an attack. It is important to learn from this – also because many investors have been deceived and lost large sums of money.

Keeping auditors on a leash

BaFin, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, is being reorganized and should be given significantly more powers. In addition, the auditors should be kept on a leash. The aim is to restore confidence. The former Dax group went bankrupt in June 2020 after billions in air bookings became known. The Munich public prosecutor’s office is investigating balance sheet falsification, fraud, market manipulation and money laundering. Several ex-Wirecard board members are in custody or on the run. The BaFin and thus also the Ministry of Finance are accused of extensive failure in the case.