2023-12-29 17:59:19
The Wirecard insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé wants around 1.5 billion euros in damages from the auditing firm EY. The lawsuit was received at the Stuttgart regional court on December 20th, a court spokesman said on Friday. This makes it the largest lawsuit in terms of the amount in dispute to be brought before the court this year. Both EY and a spokesman for the insolvency administrator did not initially comment when asked. The “Handelsblatt” had previously reported.
The court in Stuttgart is responsible because the auditing company is based there. The payment service provider Wirecard, which was listed in the Dax at the time, collapsed in 2020 after 1.9 billion euros that were supposedly booked in escrow accounts could not be found. The auditing firm EY had audited the balance sheets for years. Former CEO Markus Braun, accused of fraud, has been standing before a criminal chamber of the Munich Regional Court for a year.
The insolvency administrator accuses EY of long-standing systematic failure in the audit of the annual and consolidated financial statements of Wirecard AG as well as the annual financial statements of Wirecard Technologies GmbH for the financial years 2015 to 2019 and related services for the Wirecard Group, as the court announced. “The defendant repeatedly, seriously and deliberately violated its contractual and legal obligations as an auditor.”
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If properly audited, the annual and consolidated financial statements of Wirecard AG and the annual financial statements of Wirecard Technologies GmbH should no longer have been fully audited since 2015, argues the insolvency administrator. The unqualified audit reports issued by EY in breach of duty were incorrect.
“If the Wirecard affair had been properly examined, the Wirecard affair would have been discovered at an early stage, the damaging actions of those responsible there would have been stopped and the resulting damage would have been prevented and not occurred,” the lawsuit continues, according to the court.
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