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Edgar Ernst (archive picture): Focus on "the collection of well-paid offices"
Photo:
Rainer Unkel / imago images
In the scandal surrounding the massive balance sheet fraud at Wirecard, the German auditing agency for accounting has to look for a new boss.
President Edgar Ernst has announced his resignation.
At his own request, he will resign from his position early on December 31, 2021, announced the DPR, also known as the “accounting police”.
The DPR, which is organized as a private association, is under pressure in the Wirecard scandal because it failed to uncover the billion-dollar balance sheet hole of the Aschheim company.
The financial supervisory authority Bafin passed on indications of balance sheet manipulation from the Financial Times to the responsible DPR.
The order was sent there, the test center should have only a few staff.
Without forensic means, there was no chance of uncovering the machinations of the payment provider, Ernst defended himself two weeks ago in the Wirecard investigation committee of the Bundestag.
DPR is fighting for recognition as a test center
Ernst himself has recently been criticized for his supervisory board mandates and the conflicts of interest that may arise from them.
In addition to his work as FREP President, Ernst is a member of the supervisory bodies of the Vonovia property group, the Metro retail group and the TUI tourism group.
The SPD MP Cansel Kiziltepe urged independence: "Supervisory board mandates are incompatible with the tasks of the chief accounting officer," she said.
Any appearance of a conflict of interest must be avoided.
In the end, Ernst's attention was evidently “primarily on the collection of well-paid offices”.
The federal government terminated the contract with the FREP at the end of 2021.
The association is now endeavoring to be recognized in the future: With his resignation, Ernst wanted to "enable the FREP to make a new start in terms of personnel in the event that it is recognized as an inspection body from 2022 without the discussion that has arisen about him regarding the performance of supervisory board mandates" the DPR chairman of the board, Rolf Pohlig.
The FREP declared that from 2022, the Presidium and other members of the review center would no longer hold supervisory board mandates - as the legislature provides.
After the unsuccessful Wirecard check, the federal government initiated changes in the law to build competencies at Bafin and to abolish the two-stage process of auditing the balance sheet from DPR and Bafin.
The FREP should only be responsible for spot checks in routine cases.
The FREP had received the order in February 2019 and had no results until Wirecard went bankrupt in June 2020.
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apr / Reuters / dpa