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It didn't even take an hour before the row in the Wirecard investigative committee broke out.
The opponents: SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz on the one hand and CDU chairman Matthias Hauer on the other.
It was not about asking the minister to speak a little louder - to which Scholz responded with a thin-skinned “I speak as loud as I always speak”.
Rather, Hauer gradually presented Scholz with three emails that he sent from his private account to Wirecard in the weeks after the payment service provider's bankruptcy.
A few minutes earlier, Scholz had declared in front of the committee that business and private communication would actually be consistently separated.
The three e-mails presented forced Scholz to admit that he sometimes forwarded newspaper articles from his private address because it was technically easier.
When asked whether there are no rules for dealing with private e-mail accounts, Scholz said: "I don't know any rules."
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Hauer did not want to be satisfied with this explanation.
He saw a fundamental problem in this: “What else went out from your private account?” He asked the finance minister.
Especially since one of the three e-mails to Chancellery Minister Helge Braun (CDU) was about the termination of the contract with the privately organized "accounting police" DPR after the scandal was exposed in summer 2020.
Hauer made it clear that the problem was that such e-mails from his private account had not been "dealt with" and were therefore not presented to the committee, although this was also included in the evidence decision.
The Wirecard investigation committee with Olaf Scholz as a witness had to be interrupted in between
Source: Getty Images
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After an interruption of the meeting, in which the committee members discussed how they should deal with the information, Scholz made it clear when asked that he could not present anything more than what the committee already had.
According to Scholz, this is not least due to the fact that no further emails with newspaper articles or ticker reports could be found in his private account, since he deletes them immediately when he has read them.
"I don't archive this on my cell phone," he said.
Which he is not obliged to do either.
Hauer countered that this was not credible.
But he has to accept this now.
The turmoil surrounding the e-mails of the SPD candidate for chancellor once again made it clear how much the final of the committee of inquiry, which has met since October, is about party politics.
The SPD MP Cansel Kiziltepe spoke of "pseudo allegations" by colleague Hauer.
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Even in the days before the showdown with the hearing of Scholz's witnesses on Thursday and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) on Friday, there were repeated arguments between representatives of the grand coalition about political responsibility in this huge accounting scandal, which caused many investors to lose a lot of money to have.
In his opening statement, Scholz rejected any responsibility.
“The federal government is not responsible,” said the finance minister.
The “serious criminal and fraudulent acts” had not been uncovered for more than eleven years because the responsible auditing company had not recognized any irregularities.
When asked by a member of parliament whether he was personally responsible for ensuring that the scandal was not noticed earlier, Scholz later replied briefly with "No".
Scholz sometimes appears opinionated
Scholz was in defense mode, which made him come across as opinionated at times.
He also rejected the allegation that the financial regulator Bafin or the Ministry of Finance had held their protective hand over the company, which last summer had to admit that the balance sheet was missing 1.9 billion euros.
That is an "absurd fairy tale".
Scholz's ministry is responsible for the Bafin, which is accused of serious errors in the alleged fraud case.
Basically, he would also like to point out that important things had already happened before his term in office.
After all, he has only been Federal Minister of Finance since March 2018.
The Munich public prosecutor's office assumes a "commercial gang fraud" - and has been since 2015.
In fact, in the Wirecard case, there is nothing substantial that Scholz can be accused of.
The Ministry of Finance has legal and technical supervision over financial supervision, but serious failings by its ministry, for example with the particularly controversial ban on short sales, could not be proven after questioning around 90 witnesses and viewing many gigabytes of data.
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Scholz was not personally involved in this decision, as he himself explained again.
He only found out about it when the ban had already been issued.
In spring 2019, the Bafin temporarily prohibited investors from betting on falling prices at Wirecard.
This gave the shareholders the impression that everything was in order in the group.
And he went even further: During the time in which he was responsible, the Bafin always acted “within the scope of its legal possibilities”.
The state supervisory and control structure was simply not well enough equipped for such fraud.
It is therefore important to learn from it.
Scholz referred to the planned reform of the balance sheet audit.
The most important task is to restore trust that has been lost in the German financial center.
A Wirecard case should not be repeated.
He appealed to the MPs that the reform law would soon be finalized so that it could come into force quickly and not be watered down by “lobbying interests”.
The opposition was not satisfied with the statements made by the finance minister.
Danyal Bayaz of the Greens criticized Scholz for rejecting any responsibility.
“This self-assessment is strange for the chief employer of the financial supervisory authority.
His house has put his hands on the short sale ban, although this was issued by the Bafin against all sense and reason, ”said Bayaz.
The SPD MP Jens Zimmermann, of course, saw it differently.
"As with yesterday's questioning of his State Secretary Kukies, the alleged allegations against the finance minister turned out to be an unfounded election campaign noise," he said.
From the questioning in the committee of inquiry, the questionable handling of the minister with his private e-mail account will remain above all.
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