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Headquarters of the insolvent financial company Wirecard in Aschheim near Munich
Photo: LUKAS BARTH-TUTTAS / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock
The head of the state-owned KfW bank subsidiary IPEX, Klaus Michalak, seemed to have recognized the explosiveness of the phone call.
At five to twelve noon on June 23 of last year, he wrote an email to his superiors to inform them of a conversation that the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Jörg Kukies, wanted to have with him.
"Mr. Kukies asked me for a phone call for 2pm today," he begins his email.
Michalak made the request of the powerful finance secretary visibly nervous.
He had already been "warned" in advance, he wrote, of the intentions Kukies pursued during the phone call: The Federal Finance and Economics Ministry should think about "finding a" German solution "for Wirecard.
Obviously, the issue was that the federal government wanted to prevent the bankruptcy and cannibalization of Wirecard by foreign financial companies and to issue new loans - by directing the IPEX-Bank.
"Mr. Kukies probably wants to discuss with us whether we can not only keep still, but whether we could increase our commitment," Michalak informed the KfW top management, including its boss Günther Bräuning.
Ministry of Finance hides explosive phone call
Much of this phone call is politically extremely sensitive for Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his State Secretary Kukies: First of all, the ministry has this process even after months in which the investigative committee is investigating the scandal surrounding the collapsed financial service provider Wirecard, parliament and the public concealed.
The email from IPEX boss Michalak, which SPIEGEL has received, can be found under a high level of secrecy in a specially secured room in the Bundestag.
MPs are not allowed to take their cell phones or notepads with them.
So normally the public would never know about this phone call.
And that was probably also in the interests of the Ministry of Finance.
Because the conversation took place at a time when the situation of Wirecard was already dramatic: 1.9 billion euros in bank balances, which should actually be in trust accounts, the company had announced in an ad hoc announcement the day before, would "predominantly Probability «does not exist at all.
The events at Wirecard rolled over.
And two days after the controversial phone call, it should lead to the company's bankruptcy and the biggest financial scandal in post-war Germany.
In this situation, did the Federal Finance Minister, represented by his State Secretary, really want to pump fresh money into the tumbling group, money from the state-owned IPEX bank and ultimately tax money?
"From a risk perspective, this is not justifiable for IPEX."
IPEX boss Klaus Michalak to the board of directors of KfW
The phone call actually took place two hours after the email, on that June 23rd.
This is based on other confidential messages that Michalak sent to those responsible at KfW in the wake of the conversation with Kukies.
What must have enraged the IPEX boss about the State Secretary's request is the financial risk that such an emergency loan would mean for his bank.
"From a risk perspective, this is not justifiable for IPEX," he writes to his superiors.
This could "not be a task for IPEX, but would have to be presented by KfW in return for a back guarantee from the federal government."
The secret process feeds a reproach that the opposition in the Bundestag has been accusing the federal government of since the outbreak of the Wirecard affair: it ignored the many warning signals that it had given about balance sheet manipulation in previous years.
After all, the government wanted to build a strong, global, digital company from Germany.
Federal Finance Minister Scholz had been campaigning in China since 2018 to give Wirecard access to the local financial market; in September 2019, with the participation of ex-defense minister and Wirecard lobbyist Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, even advertised this on a state visit to Beijing.
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Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his State Secretary Jörg Kukies at a meeting of the Bundestag Finance Committee in July 2020 on the Wirecard scandal
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
In the context of the Kukies phone call, the suspicion that in particular the Federal Ministry of Finance and its subordinate authorities, such as the banking supervisory authority Bafin, did not investigate the abundant allegations rigorously enough, is also renewed.
The hopes that had been placed on the Wirecard Group, which in the meantime had even climbed into the most important German stock index Dax, were probably too high.
The belief in the national champion Wirecard did not seem to have evaporated shortly before the collapse in the federal government.
In any case, the phone call is an indication of this.
That is how the opposition sees it.
"The federal government must now finally explain whether this mindset was actually their program," says Green finance expert Danyal Bayaz: "It looks very much like it."
For the FDP chairman in the investigative committee, Florian Toncar, it is just as scandalous that State Secretary Kukies unabashedly intervenes in an institution that is state-owned but not bound by instructions in its business decisions, such as IPEX.
"It is frightening that the Federal Ministry of Finance wanted to use IPEX for political goals," Toncar told SPIEGEL: "That was a clear crossing of borders." Kukies also tried that with Commerzbank, in which the state is involved, and they like them IPEX had granted a loan to Wirecard.
“The authority of State Secretary Jörg Kukies has probably been irreparably damaged by the Wirecard case.
One has to doubt that he is the right one to implement the fundamental reforms that are now necessary at the Bafin. "
Opposition criticizes fatal belief in a national champion
The chairman of the Left in the committee of inquiry, Fabio De Masi, reminds us that the IPEX boss stated in his survey that he would have liked to withdraw from the credit for Wirecard months earlier.
Apparently there were also legal options for such a withdrawal.
"Looking at the phone call from Kukies, the urgent question arises whether the fatal adherence to Wirecard is solely due to pressure from the government," De Masi told SPIEGEL.
Political gambling did not end well for the citizens, says the left-wing finance expert, pointing out that IPEX resold the original loan of 100 million euros to financial investors at a discount of 90 percent.
"Real tax money was burned," says De Masi: "Wirecard has received a political escort service from the Ministry of Finance - from the German-Chinese financial dialogue to the open credit faucet through a bank syndicate."
With its planned emergency rescue operation, the federal government was obviously concerned with keeping the company alive and the technology suspected there for processing Internet payments in Germany.
Documents reported by the Reuters news agency also point in the same direction.
According to this, Kukies wrote a memo to Finance Minister Scholz the day before the phone call with IPEX boss Michalak, in which he suggested using Corona aid funds to save Wirecard.
The left-wing MP De Masi, however, asks the provocative question which technology could have been saved at Wirecard: "The algorithm used by Wirecard's porn customers?" Says De Masi.
A request to the Federal Ministry of Finance about the state rescue plans for Wirecard initially remained unanswered on Tuesday.
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