Result of the Wirecard scandal: Bafin boss Hufeld has to go

Friday 29th January 2021

Result of the Wirecard scandal
Bafin boss Hufeld has to go

The Wircard scandal now also has personnel consequences at the top of the financial supervisory authority. In the course of a reorganization, the previous head of the authorities Hufeld has to leave. Finance Minister Scholz announced.

At the financial supervisory authority Bafin, there is a change at the top after the Wirecard scandal. As the finance ministry announced, Bafin boss Felix Hufeld is stopping in the course of the realignment. Financial regulators and their boss had come under pressure from the revelations. The scandal surrounding Wirecard AG revealed that the German financial supervisory authority needed a reorganization in order to be able to fulfill its supervisory function more effectively, according to the ministry. An investigation was commissioned by the Bafin, the results of which would be presented in the coming week.

The Ministry and the President of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin) discussed the situation in a joint meeting today. It was mutually agreed that, in addition to organizational changes, there should also be a new start in terms of personnel at the top of BaFin.

Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said: "I would like to express my thanks to Felix Hufeld for his great commitment at the top of Bafin over the past eight years. During this time, he made a significant contribution to financial services supervision in Germany and Europe. The planned organizational reform We associate Bafin with a new start in terms of personnel. "

FDP: departure "unavoidable"

"I was allowed to work at the top of BaFin for eight years, including six as President," said Hufeld. The Bafin has developed significantly and gained relevance in many ways. "Now we have to tackle other tasks, which I wish my successor to do with the best."

In addition to Hufeld, BaFin Deputy Head Elisabeth Roegele is also losing her post. "I would like to express my thanks to Elisabeth Roegele for her great commitment as Executive Director of BaFin," said the State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Jörg Kukies. Roegele, who was responsible for securities supervision, came under fire in the wake of the Wirecard scandal.

The SPD chairman in the Bundestag investigation committee, Jens Zimmermann, welcomed the decision of the finance ministry. "According to the findings of the work in the committee of inquiry, a new start at the top of Bafin is the best way to implement the reform in financial supervision." Left-wing politician Fabio De Masi spoke of an "overdue" step.

Florian Toncar from the FDP called Hufeld's departure "inevitable". The reason is not the misconduct of an individual employee, but grave misjudgments by BaFin in the Wirecard case. Toncar also criticized Scholz. This "did not give a good picture in the Wirecard scandal". "At all costs he wanted to avoid having to admit mistakes in his area." That had "at times absurd features".

"Commercial gang fraud"

The 59-year-old lawyer Hufeld, who has headed Bafin since March 2015, called the Wirecard affairs a "shame" and spoke of the "most appalling situation" in which he had ever seen a company in the first German stock market league. At the same time, the Bafin boss was self-critical about the role of supervision: "We were not effective enough to prevent something like this from happening."

According to information from the German Press Agency, the head of the Apas auditor supervision, Ralf Bose, was also given an extraordinary termination – he had already been released in mid-December. Bose had come under fire for share deals in connection with the Wirecard scandal. The termination by the responsible Federal Office for Economics and Export Control took place on January 13th. The Federal Office is part of the Federal Ministry of Economics under Minister Peter Altmaier of the CDU. According to dpa information, the ministry is now tightening the Apas compliance code. The head of the quality control department had already taken over the management of Apas until further notice.

Apas boss Bose had testified in the Bundestag's Wirecard investigative committee that he had privately traded shares in the scandalous company while the authority was already investigating the case. Apas oversees auditors in Germany. In the Wirecard case, EY auditors had approved balance sheets for years and are confronted with the accusation of not looking closely enough.

The now insolvent Wirecard AG had granted air bookings of 1.9 billion euros in June. The Munich public prosecutor's office is now assuming "commercial gang fraud" – since 2015. More than three billion euros could be lost. The question is, how did this happen? And when exactly did the financial regulators know about irregularities and have they done too little about them? Since 2015, the British newspaper "Financial Times" had repeatedly reported on oddities and irregularities at Wirecard.