The share price of the real estate company Adler Group fell on Tuesday after reports of current prosecutor's investigations in connection with an important real estate project of the group.

However, the reports have not been confirmed by the authorities.

Nevertheless, the price loss widened to a minus of more than 14 percent.

At the end of April, Adler shocked its investors with a billion-dollar loss and the news that the auditors, KPMG, did not want to certify the annual financial statements.

Mark Fehr

Editor in Business.

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According to a report by the "Handelsblatt", the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office has now started investigations.

Bafin boss Mark Branson is said to have informed members of the Bundestag about this at a secret meeting last week.

The financial politicians wanted to use this opportunity to get first-hand information about the situation at Adler from Branson.

Apparently, politicians are also alarmed by the doubts about the Adler balance sheet.

When asked by the FAZ about the Adler case, the prosecutors from Frankfurt did not want to provide any information at the moment.

The real estate company also did not want to comment on the current reports.

Regardless of this, the following applies: "Should the public prosecutor approach us, we will of course fully cooperate, just as we have always fully cooperated with the Bafin and other authorities and will continue to do so," said an Adler spokesman.

The company, which belongs to the S-Dax small-cap index, is under massive pressure because the short seller Fraser Perring made serious allegations against Adler last autumn.

He is of the opinion that influential people behind the wheel arranged deals to the detriment of Adler shareholders and, to this end, misvalued real estate and manipulated key figures.

A special investigation commissioned by the company and carried out by the forensic experts from the auditing company KPMG was unable to completely dispel the allegations.

Financial supervision continues to examine

The financial regulator Bafin has also been examining the Adler Group's balance sheets for some time and now wants to follow up on the information from KPMG's special audit report.

In addition, the authority is investigating whether insider trading has taken place in connection with the price losses of the Adler share.

Adler has now presented the annual financial statements for 2021, which have been postponed several times, but the auditor's certificate is still missing.

Adler's chairman of the board, Stefan Kirsten, admitted at the beginning of May that the past financial year could probably no longer be healed.

Instead, however, an attestation for an opening balance sheet for the year 2022 should be sought.

However, the previously commissioned audit is no longer available for this purpose.

So Adler has to try to find a new auditor quickly.