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Berlin (dpa) - Even while his authority was investigating the Wirecard scandal, the head of the auditor's supervision Apas was trading in shares in the scandalous company.

He admitted that during the night in the Wirecard investigation committee of the Bundestag.

Now the Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier (CDU), who is responsible for the Apas, is also coming under pressure: He must dismiss his head of the authorities, Ralf Bose, demanded committee members from various parliamentary groups.

Altmaier himself was "strange" about the share purchases on Friday.

"We will speak to those involved and we will check very carefully whether the applicable regulations have been complied with and whether it is necessary to draw conclusions from them," the minister announced.

But care should be taken before "quick fixes".

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The head of Apas testified in the committee that he bought the shares on April 28, 2020 and sold them again on May 20.

On the day of the purchase, the stock exchange price of Wirecard crashed after the auditing company KPMG had revealed in a special report that there was no evidence of the existence of alleged customer relationships and the sales generated by the aspiring tech group.

Nevertheless, he believed in the business model of the aspiring fin-tech, said the head of the agency, according to participants in the committee.

At this point, his authority had already initiated preliminary investigations against the Wirecard auditors from EY.

When the head of the agency sold his shares again at a loss on May 20, his agency initiated formal professional supervision proceedings against the auditors.

Whether the sale was related to this process remained open at first.

The left's financial politician, Fabio De Masi, pointed to a phone call between the Apas management and the state supervisory authority Bafin in connection with Wirecard on the same day.

Members of several parliamentary groups called for personal consequences: "From my point of view, he cannot remain in office," commented FDP finance politician Florian Toncar on the statement by the head of the authorities.

His colleague in the Greens, Danyal Bayaz, said: "Without a fresh start at the top of APAS it will hardly be possible to regain trust that has been lost."

Altmaier is asked here.

The left's financial politician, Fabio De Masi, also called for the head of the authorities to be dismissed.

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At the same time, there must be clearer rules against insider trading in supervisory authorities and the ministries themselves, the MPs criticized.

The federal government announced in November that it had no knowledge of share trading at Apas or other supervisory authorities, as there were no reporting requirements.

The CSU finance politician Hans Michelbach called for the incident to be investigated immediately and for the necessary conclusions to be drawn from it.

"It cannot be acceptable that the president of the Apas auditors trade in shares in a company that is indirectly the subject of a review," said the deputy chairman of the Wirecard committee to the "Handelsblatt".

It must also be clarified what exactly was discussed between Apas and Bafin during the telephone call in question.

Apas is criticized in the Wirecard case because it did not initiate formal proceedings against EY until summer 2020, although the fraud allegations had hardened months earlier.

A sub-department head justified this in the committee: After a phone call with the auditors, one had the impression that the matter was being dealt with.

There were no concrete indications that the examiners were violating their professional duties at the time.

Committee members, on the other hand, have the impression that EY wanted to protect itself by calling the supervisory authority.

"The Apas seems to be a spectator authority," criticized the SPD finance politician Cansel Kiziltepe.

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For years, EY blessed the balance sheets of the meanwhile insolvent former Dax group Wirecard - and is confronted with the accusation of not looking closely enough.

Because Wirecard is said to have shown fake profits since 2015, in the summer the group admitted air bookings of 1.9 billion euros.

The purchase of the shares shows that the head of the auditors' oversight obviously did not understand the scandal correctly, explained De Masi.

Bayaz emphasized that the head of the authorities had “not only completely failed to understand the scope of the KPMG report, but also showed a terrifying ignorance of an obvious conflict of interest”.

"How Apas and their responsible minister Altmaier come to the conclusion that the supervisory activities of the authority for the Wirecard final audits are free of errors remains completely incomprehensible, according to their statements in the investigation committee."

The negligence in supervision and control runs like a red thread through the Wirecard scandal.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201211-99-655647 / 2