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The CEO of Deutsche Bank, Christian Sewing, said he knew nothing about the takeover plans of the scandalous company Wirecard.
He only found out about the "Project Panther" in the summer of 2020 through a media inquiry, Sewing said on Friday night in the Wirecard investigation committee of the Bundestag.
A few months before the accounting scandal broke up, the top of the Dax group Wirecard had the idea of taking over Deutsche Bank and had this checked by a consulting company.
Wirecard boss Markus Braun only spoke to him at the beginning of 2019 about whether a collaboration in individual areas could make sense, Sewing said.
Braun saw the future of Deutsche Bank as a tech company with affiliated banking business.
However, the idea was not very specific and “hypothetical”.
If you had known about takeover plans at the time, you would not have spoken to Wirecard about such a project.
Deutsche Bank also took part in loans for Wirecard - and, according to Sewing, lost around 18 million euros due to balance sheet fraud.
The manipulation could not be seen in the usual checks of the bank, said the CEO.
In such situations, the bank depends on being able to rely on annual financial statements, for example.
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Sewing emphasized that the accounting scandal had cast a bad light on Germany as a financial center.
He called for supervision to be strengthened.