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The case of the DAX company Wirecard, which collapsed in June 2020, was a lot - a bitter bankruptcy for shareholders, the loss of jobs for 750 employees, a revelation for auditors and financial regulators, a lesson about political patronage for a national champion.

Last but not least, Wirecard was the most spectacular bank robbery in recent history - without any weapons or escape vehicle.

But how did the fraudsters get money at Wirecard?

There is still nothing to be gained by inventing bogus sales and telling growth tales.

They could have benefited from the upwardly manipulated share price, but it was probably less: The volatile member of the management board Jan Marsalek, for example, did not sell any Wirecard shares between 2015 and 2020.

The balance sheet fraud served (as is usually the case) to harm the lender.

And they were generous: Wirecard received a credit line of 1.75 billion euros in 2019 from a bank consortium.

In addition, there were bonds worth 1.4 billion euros in 2019 alone.

The insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé provides dry information about the whereabouts of the money: "There was no liquidity at all with the debtor and major group companies."

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All banks involved now have to ask themselves critical questions.

After all, Wirecard was a controversial company, and in 2019 the allegations of falsification of accounts increased.

Accordingly, in 2019 all banks had doubts about this customer.

The extension of the loans in the same year was declared in unison with the certificate from EY as well as the short sale ban and the reports by the financial supervisory authority BaFin against Wirecard critics.

These wrong government decisions were so serious that personnel consequences at BaFin and in the Ministry of Finance are inevitable.

However, one cannot lump all banks together.

Bayern LB got out in good time, while Deutsche Bank at least secured the majority of its Wirecard loan and stopped business with the private holding of Wirecard boss Braun.

Commerzbank, in which the state has a 15 percent stake, decided to exit completely as soon as possible.

Even so, she lost about 175 million euros.

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The IPEX-Bank was hit just as badly.

This belongs to the state-owned KfW, but does not actually operate a public promotional business, but offers export and project finance.

IPEX lent Wirecard 100 million euros in August 2019, although the management had previously discussed an exit due to concerns.

In the end, IPEX lost around 90 million euros.

The public prosecutor sees indications of breach of trust in lending.

The supervisory board was caught off guard by all of this and was only able to bring itself to investigate breaches of duty by IPEX employees under pressure from the investigation.

The results are pending.

The discussion about the consequences of the Wirecard case is ongoing.

It is about internal control systems, auditors and financial supervision.

But that's not all: Commerzbank and IPEX are teaching us again that state holdings in banks can result in high losses.

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The federal government should therefore quickly draft a plan for exiting Commerzbank.

In the end, this also helps the bank, because as long as the federal government is its most powerful shareholder, other investors will hold back.

In turn, IPEX is an efficient bank despite the loss of Wirecard.

However, it does not operate a promotional business like KfW, but rather marketable business in direct competition with the private sector.

What would speak against letting IPEX grow up and be listed on the stock exchange, placing it in private hands?

In this way, it could develop more freely than in the environment of a promotional bank, the demarcation between public promotional business and the private sector would be clearer - and if there should be another bank robbery, taxpayers would at least be safe from that.

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"Everything on shares" is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team.

Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz.

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