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“Wirecard has fooled us all” – Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told the Wirecard research committee today. The former Federal Minister of the Economy defended his role as an external advisor to Wirecard and saw himself as a victim of the financial scandal. His consulting firm Spitzberg Partners is neither a prosecutor nor an auditor, the 49-year-old said in Berlin on Thursday. At no time was your company aware of balance sheet fraud or money laundering by the former Dax group. “That was simply unthinkable.”
The billion-dollar scandal took him completely by surprise, the former CSU politician said. His company had limited knowledge and learned of the fraud as late as the public. With current knowledge, there would be no advocate for the payment processor. However, the company has received certificates from unqualified auditors for more than ten years. “Wirecard has fooled us all.”
Merkel campaigned for Wirecard on a trip to China
Guttenberg had informed the federal government of Wirecard’s planned market entry in China and asked them to support the plans benevolently. Chancellor Angela Merkel then campaigned for Wirecard on a trip to China in September 2019. It is normal on such trips to defend German businesses, she said in the Bundestag on Wednesday.
Wirecard went bankrupt in June after air bookings worth billions were known. The Public Ministry investigates, among other things, account falsification, fraud, market manipulation and money laundering. It is one of the biggest financial scandals of the postwar period.
As a service provider for cashless payments, the company sat at the interface between merchants and credit card companies and, based on current research, has been in losses for years. Among other things, EY auditors and financial regulator Bafin are criticized because the fraud was not exposed before. The commission of inquiry also wants to find out whether the Foreign Ministry suspected that things were not going well at Wirecard.
