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Men's alliances have helped many managers achieve soaring careers.

But some buddies can also be harmful.

This is the experience that Deutsche Bank Supervisory Board Alexander Schütz has to make.

He has been in contact with Wirecard boss Markus Braun for years.

The tone of voice between the two Austrians is correspondingly relaxed and confidential.

In an email in February 2019, Schütz wrote: "I read in the FT (Financial Times) that you are very bad".

After a few chats about holidays in the south of France, he added: "By the way, I bought Wirecard shares three times last week, get this newspaper ready!"

Maybe it was just a joke at the time.

A smiley was also found there.

But now nobody finds such remarks funny anymore.

People in Berlin are outraged.

These emails were revealed by the Wirecard investigative committee of the Bundestag.

The SPD member of the Bundestag and committee member Jens Zimmermann speaks of an attack on freedom of the press.

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The "Financial Times" was the first to report on the Wirecard scandal and thus contributed significantly to the unveiling of the biggest economic scandal in post-war history.

Schütz apologized for the statements on Friday and wrote in an email to the Bloomberg news agency that he believed at the time that the allegations against Wirecard were unfounded.

He will discuss the next steps with the chairman of the supervisory board, Paul Achleitner.

There is speculation in financial circles that Schütz will be pressured to resign.

How close the relationship between the two Austrians Braun and Schütz is is controversial.

A few months ago Schütz had told the magazine “WirtschaftsWoche” that he was acquainted with Braun, but “definitely not a close confidante” of his.

Neither of them had "had any business discussions".

Christian Sewing doesn't want to have known anything

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Obviously, their exchange was about professional issues: “At the beginning of 2019, I believed Markus Braun that Wirecard was a company with integrity that was wrongly defamed and that there was actually a media campaign initiated by short sellers against the company “, Writes Schütz in the email to Bloomberg.

“It's now clear that I was wrong.

I therefore apologize in all form to the Financial Times and their reporters for this emotional and misplaced statement. "

Deutsche Bank's connections to Wirecard were the subject of Thursday's committee of inquiry, which is examining the collapse of the payment service provider.

Last year, Wirecard filed for bankruptcy in the biggest post-war German accounting scandal, and former executives, including Braun, are in custody or are on the run.

Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing said in a testimony that he did not know anything about Schütz's email.

A spokesman for the bank emphasized: “We first learned of the existence of such an email that night.

In principle, we do not comment on private statements made by members of the Supervisory Board.

Regardless of this, however, both the content and the attitude of the quoted statement are unacceptable - regardless of who it comes from. "

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Schütz had originally moved into the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank as a representative of the Chinese conglomerate HNA, which at times was the institute's largest shareholder with almost ten percent of the shares.

Due to financial difficulties, the Chinese then gradually reduced their shares.

They gave the remainder of the block of shares to the Schütz family office.

With 17.4 million shares, the Austrian now owns around 0.8 percent of the bank.

Schütz is also the largest shareholder in Cyan, which issued a profit warning after the Wirecard bankruptcy.