Wirecard Probe Pushes German Government To Release Talks With CEO Markus Braun
Lawmakers are urging German Chancellor Angela Merkel to
release transcripts of conversations between Deputy Finance Minister Jörg
Kukies and former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun, as the collapse of the payments
processing company has captured headlines for weeks.
The Financial Times reported there was one conversation
between the two men that took place on Braun’s 50th birthday in November and an
earlier talk in September.
In a letter to the Parliament’s Finance Committee, Sarah
Ryglewski, a deputy finance minister, said the content of the conversations
could not be disclosed because they are classified, the Times reported after
seeing the letter.
As a result, members of Parliament can only see a summary of
the conversations, but its content cannot be released to the public.
“This is just utterly unacceptable,” Fabio De Masi, a
lawmaker with the leftwing Die Linke party, told the FT. “Given the scope and
scale of the Wirecard scandal and the regulatory and political failure in
handling it, the wider public has a fundamental right to know.”
Danyal Bayaz, a Green member of parliament, told the
Financial Times he blamed the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin),
Germany’s financial regulator, for the mess.
“BaFin failed to take the many warnings over irregularities
at Wirecard seriously for way too long,” he said. “Even if BaFin lacked certain
regulatory competencies to crack down on Wirecard, it at least should have
flagged this issue much earlier.”
Once a rising star on the world stage, the $28 billion
financial technology giant declared insolvency last month, the equivalent of a
bankruptcy filing in the U.S.; The company reported it owed creditors nearly $4
billion after it revealed $2.1 billion went missing from two Philippines banks
that Ernst & Young said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.
German law enforcement authorities said they have added
money laundering, balance falsification and market manipulation to the charges
facing the collapsed firm.
Braun has been arrested and released pending a trial, while
Wirecard’s former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek is being sought by
authorities in several countries.
Last week, the company’s Dublin offices were raided by
police at the request of German authorities.
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