Frankfurt (AFP)

The boss of the German financial policeman, Bafin, will be replaced following the bankruptcy of the Wirecard company, the biggest post-war financial scandal in the country, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz announced on Friday.

The liquidation of this payment provider Wirecard, leaving an accounting hole of 1.9 billion euros, revealed that "the German financial supervisory authority needs a reorganization", he said in a statement on replacing Felix Hufeld.

Olaf Scholz underlined wanting to combine "the organizational reform" of the authority "with a new start in terms of personnel".

The pressure was mounted on the shoulders of the president of Bafin after the authority announced Thursday it had filed a complaint against one of its employees, accused of insider trading in the Wirecard affair.

The employee in question had traded on the stock market and speculated on June 17, 2020 on the Wirecard share, the day before the announcement by Bafin of the result of an analysis of the company's accounts showing a hole of 1.9 billion euros in funds on the balance sheet.

In total, some 85 Bafin employees speculated on Wirecard's action in the first half of 2020, before the online payment company went bankrupt, raising the question of their independence.

Adding to the Dieselgate business at Volkswagen or embezzlement at Deutsche Bank, the fall of Wirecard, a financial services provider in the booming electronic payments segment, was described in June as a "complete disaster" and "shame" for the country by Mr. Hufeld.

The results of a survey commissioned in the fall by the Ministry of Finance on Bafin will be presented next week.

"The first personal consequences are finally emerging", but "there must be a new beginning, reacted to AFP the liberal deputy Frank Schäffler, member of the Committee of Inquiry of the Chamber of Deputies on the Wirecard scandal.

© 2021 AFP