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Hans Michelbach: "The Wirecard scandal cost me my friendship with Guttenberg"
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Before the questioning Angela Merkel (CDU) in the Wirecard investigation committee, the CSU finance politician Hans Michelbach defended the Chancellor - and sharply criticized his party colleague Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg for his lobbying work.
"You can't hire a Chancellor to do business," Michelbach told the Handelsblatt.
"Especially not if you haven't checked the business model yourself and have pocketed 900,000 euros for it."
"The Wirecard scandal cost me my friendship with Guttenberg," said Michelbach, who is also the deputy chairman of the committee.
"He berated me for not supporting him."
Guttenberg had lobbied Merkel before a trip to China for Wirecard, so that the Chancellor would stand up for the group in Beijing.
"Too many lobbyists smelled money at Wirecard, the self-responsibility of the economy did not work," said Michelbach.
Merkel was invited to the committee as a witness that morning because of this trip.
At that time there were already critical media reports about the scandalous company, but according to a spokesman, Merkel did not know anything about the serious irregularities in the company.
"Incomparable attack on the market economy"
Before interviewing the Chancellor, Michelbach drew a positive assessment of the committee's work. "The committee of inquiry has uncovered how such an incomparable attack on the market economy was possible," he told the newspaper. If you add everything up - the losses for investors, the damage for creditors - then a total of at least 22 billion euros has been lost so far. And the sum will probably continue to grow with the bankruptcy proceedings. "That something like this was possible, you have to say: Nothing worked on a broad level, politics and financial supervision made it too easy for the fraudsters."
There have been many misconduct, politicians have "always waited", although the Ministry of Finance had been informed by the Bafin supervisory authority.
In particular, Michelbach criticized State Secretary for Finance Jörg Kukies.
"Kukies was a very active part of the failure, but Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht and Economics Minister Peter Altmaier also have to be asked about their responsibility for the disaster."
Scholz (SPD) said in his more than nine-hour committee questionnaire on Thursday that the government was not responsible for what he saw as large-scale fraud.
He saw mistakes especially in the auditors and the need for reform in the financial supervisory authority Bafin.
The now insolvent Wirecard AG admitted in June 2020 that the 1.9 billion euros on the balance sheet, which were supposedly in Asian bank accounts, could not be found.
The Munich public prosecutor's office is now assuming “commercial gang fraud” - since 2015. More than three billion euros could be lost.
apr
