Photographer: Michaela Handrek-Rehle / Bloomberg
Photographer: Michaela Handrek-Rehle / Bloomberg
Munich prosecutor in charge of fraud investigation at collapsed payment company Wirecard AG defended her office’s response in the next 1 1/2 years up to the company exploded, saying there was not enough evidence to step in at the time.
Appearing ahead of a parliamentary inquiry in Berlin, Hildegard Bäumler-Hösl said Wirecard was at its office “on our radar” more than a year before the Munich company filed for bankruptcy but the evidence did not prove enough. Reports in the Financial Times described a wrong that happened in Singapore, outside the jurisdiction of her office, she said.
“We are prosecutors, not inspectors or boards of directors,” Bäumler-Hösl said. “We’ll show when the milk has already been poured. We are a pathology. ”
The fall of the high profile of the German fintec company that once flew high has put pressure on the German authorities to explain how it could be said that it committed a crime for years in plain sight. The country’s Bafin governor is under special scrutiny, with lawyers calling for the financial watchdog to come clean. Speaking at Bäumler-Hösl, Bafin leader Felix Hufeld announced his resignation, in which Finance Minister Olaf Scholz called it a “regulatory resumption” for the regulator.
Wirecard fell in the middle of last year after it emerged that about 1.9 billion euros ($ 2.3 billion) in previously accepted cash sitting in accounts in Asia was indeed not ever. Former CEO Markus Braun is in jail, while his deputy, Jan Marsalek, escapes.
In the years that follow up to when it came in, the company had seen a meteoric rise from the darkness of fintech to the impact of the investment community and political elite alike. But By the time Wirecard rose to the Dax Index of 30 largest companies, allegations of injustice began to emerge, which the regulator consistently denied. According to Bäumler-Hösl, three separate money probes in 2019 into Wirecard were also dropped.
“We knew from the FT report that these were crimes, but these were happening in Singapore and not Germany, so we did not have enough to intervene,” Bäumler-Hösl said.
(Updates by releasing the controller in the fourth paragraph)