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Hildegard Bäumler-Hösl:
"We need a crime scene in Germany or a German who acted"
Photo: Lukas Barth / ddp images / Lukas Barth
She quickly lowers expectations: Actually, she couldn't say much - because of the ongoing investigations, stated Senior Public Prosecutor
Hildegard
Bäumler-Hösl
(57) on Friday when she appeared before the Wirecard Investigation Committee in Berlin right at the beginning.
After this preface, however, it will be one and a half hours that the chief investigator speaks.
Nonstop.
Always further in the text.
It is a mixture of a criminal law lecture and protocol-like descriptions of the Wirecard saga that the politicians get to hear.
The core message from Bäumler-Hösl: "We have followed up every hint."
And further: "We need a crime scene in Germany or a German who acted" in order to get in and start investigations.
Bäumler-Hösl quickly takes the wind out of the sails of the politicians.
The committee of inquiry had previously
interviewed
the British shortseller
Matthew Earl
(41), one of Wirecard's early critics, for
almost five hours
.
He reports clear evidence that he has provided the investigators for dubious machinations of the group, such as money laundering, without any consequences.
Bäumler-Hösl explains this mainly by saying that things were barred.
Wirecard is the first Dax group to file for bankruptcy.
The trigger was a billion dollar hole that appeared in June 2020.
Since then, the Munich public prosecutor has been investigating market manipulation, falsification of accounts and fraud and speaks of a criminal gang that was at work.
Government agencies and key players such as EY auditors, the financial supervisory authority Bafin and the accounting police DPR misjudged the extent of the Wirecard affair for a long time or did not intervene energetically enough.
Members of the committee of inquiry also criticize the public prosecutor's office for not having issued an arrest warrant against Jan Marsalek (40) quickly enough.
The former Wirecard board member is believed to have been the mastermind behind the fraud and has been on the run for months.
Arrest warrant as a last resort
"An arrest warrant is the last resort," emphasizes Bäumler-Hösl in her opening statement.
In addition, you need an urgent suspicion.
One did not proceed too hesitantly, said the chief prosecutor: "We were always in the starting blocks."
The MPs criticize the fact that the investigators acted too slowly on the one hand, but also too hastily and uncritically on the other.
In February 2019, the public prosecutor forwarded a "thin material" to the Bafin in February 2019, which led to a ban on the short sale of Wirecard shares and thus to a very far-reaching decision to protect the group.
A lawyer told the investigators that the Bloomberg news agency called Wirecard board member Marsalek and asked for six million euros.
Otherwise one will accept the offer of the "Financial Times".
That should have consisted of it: Bloomberg should get into the negative Wirecard reporting of the "Financial Times", that will then be rewarded with financial advantages.
It is astonishing how the public prosecutor simply passed on such an unconvincing matter, criticizes the Green politician Bayaz.
The short sale ban is one of a number of points of criticism of the Bafin and head of the authorities Felix Hufeld (59) in the Wirecard affair.
That costs him his job.
Late on Friday afternoon, Hufeld announced his resignation after a conversation with the Federal Ministry of Finance.
In the Wirecard investigative committee, Bäumler-Hösl appeals to the members of parliament to give public prosecutors other tools so that we at Wirecard can develop more clout in similar cases in the future.
"Extend the statute of limitations," she demands, "lower the hurdles" so that if German companies should commit offenses abroad, they can get involved earlier.
"That would be of great help to us."
