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Call for a search for the escaped Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek
Photo:
Daniel Bockwoldt / dpa
It is probably the largest case of fraud in the economic history of the Federal Republic: the collapse of the financial services provider Wirecard.
But it is not just a white collar crime that unfolds with the insolvency of the company in Aschheim near Munich this summer.
A parliamentary committee of inquiry begins this Thursday in the Bundestag to examine above all the political dimension.
Because Wirecard, that was the hope of the federal government, should be a national champion that politicians wanted to adorn themselves with.
Secret services also play a role - the particularly dazzling tangent in the Wirecard affair.
That is why the opposition from the Left, the Greens and the FDP is calling for a special investigator to be appointed to investigate the Wirecard Group's contacts with secret services in Austria and Russia, for example.
"We need an independent personality with extensive investigative powers," says Fabio De Masi, left chairman in the Wirecard investigation committee.
His FDP colleague Florian Toncar recalls the contacts between Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek and former top politicians and officials from the security apparatus.
A special investigator could help clarify "whether German security interests were endangered".
Coalition representatives must vote
Toncar alludes to reports that Marsalek supplied the then FPÖ Interior Minister of Austria with intelligence information.
It is also suspected that Marsalek should have received support from Russian services in his escape, among others.
Marsalek initially flew to Belarus by private jet in June, but is now supposed to be in Russia.
The Greens chairman Danyal Bayaz hopes that this will relieve the members of the committee of inquiry.
"We can then concentrate on the obvious shortcomings of the regulatory authorities and the failings of the federal government."
The opposition politicians have already submitted an application, but for this they need the votes of the coalition representatives.
Only experts are to be heard in the committee;
Invited are Chancellor Angela Merkel, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, Ex-Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and the imprisoned Ex-Wirecard boss Markus Braun.
A first expert is to be heard at Thursday's meeting, which begins the actual work of the committee.
This is the financial expert Thomas Borgwerth.
In the coming week, among others, the "Financial Times" reporter Dan McCrum will follow, whose reports on tampering already pointed to irregularities at Wirecard years ago.
The meeting with the experts is not open to the public.
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