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Berlin (dpa) - In the Bundestag committee of inquiry into the Wirecard balance sheet scandal, deficits in the final audit of the scandalous company were indicated.
The special investigator Alexander Geschonneck from the auditing company KPMG was questioned in the Bundestag on Thursday.
In a special audit, he had revealed that there was no evidence of the existence of alleged customer relationships and the sales generated by the emerging tech group.
He did not have to use any special methods for this, said the business IT specialist.
These were standard test methods that the Institute of German Auditors also provide.
"We didn't go any further than to behave according to our standards," said Geschonneck.
He did not want to evaluate the specific work of the Wirecard auditors at the EY auditing company.
These auditors had for years confirmed the financial statements of the scandal group as correct.
The financial politician of the Greens, Danyal Bayaz, assessed Geschonneck's statement as a “disastrous testimony” for the EY auditors.
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The balance sheet controllers are currently under pressure in several respects.
According to a report by the “Handelsblatt”, which was confirmed by the dpa, the auditors' supervisory authority Apas also raised allegations against them.
There should be indications of criminal offenses by the actors involved, the supervisory authority has therefore called on the public prosecutor.
An EY spokesman said: "EY sees no evidence of any criminal misconduct by EY auditors in the Wirecard case."
The left's financial politician, Fabio De Masi, commented: “The roof is on fire at EY!”
Several employees of the auditing company were supposed to testify in the committee later that evening, but had already invoked their duty of confidentiality as auditors.
Above all, the investigation committee in the Bundestag wants to uncover whether the German fintech company Wirecard, an up-and-coming star on the stock exchange, was handled with kid gloves by the supervisory authorities despite indications of irregularities.
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The now insolvent former Dax group had granted air bookings of 1.9 billion euros in the summer.
The company, once traded as a German technology hope, made losses for years according to the current state of the investigation.
The Munich prosecutor assumes that fictitious profits have been reported since 2015.
According to their calculations, banks and investors alone lost more than three billion euros.
Many shareholders also lost large sums of money after the stock market crash.
KPMG was commissioned with the special audit in October 2019 after there were several reports of irregularities at Wirecard.
The company then put a few obstacles in the way of the special auditors, Geschonneck said.
"In the course of the investigation, we encountered significant hurdles and obstacles that were due to Wirecard's unwillingness to cooperate."
Some documents were made available several months late, interview dates were postponed and access to IT systems was not made possible.
The result was nevertheless clear: Wirecard did not provide sufficient evidence of the existence of customer relationships and the revenues allegedly generated from them for business with third-party partners in Asia.
These deals are said to have made up more than half of Wirecard's sales and a large part of profit.
However, Geschonneck reported that there was insufficient evidence of the amount of sales, account balances or incoming payments.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201126-99-477295 / 2