Wirecard scandal: BAFin not liable

The Fed­eral Fin­an­cial Su­per­vis­ory Au­thor­ity (BAFin) is not li­able to in­jured Wir­e­card in­vestors. This has now been de­cided in the second in­stance by the Frank­furt Higher Re­gional Court (1 U 173/22), thus con­firm­ing the rul­ing of the lower court.

In June 2020, the fin­an­cial ser­vices pro­vider was forced to ad­mit that 1.9 bil­lion euros, which should have been in es­crow ac­counts in Asia, could not be found. As a res­ult, the share price plummeted dra­mat­ic­ally, and Wir­e­card had to file for in­solv­ency a short time later.

As a res­ult, the Ger­man fin­an­cial su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity also came un­der heavy cri­ti­cism. For years, the BAFin had pro­tec­ted the then Dax com­pany and failed to dis­cover the fraud­u­lent activities.
Nearly 500 pro­ceed­ings by ag­grieved in­vestors are pending be­fore the Frank­furt Higher Re­gional Court, claim­ing dam­ages from BAFin. In the spe­cific case, claims for dam­ages of ap­prox­im­ately 40,000 euros were at issue.

How­ever, the court now ruled that the au­thor­ity had not vi­ol­ated its of­fi­cial du­ties. Thus, the plaintiff had “not presen­ted any tan­gible evid­ence for the as­sump­tion” that BAFin should have com­mis­sioned a spe­cial audit at an earlier point in time. The court also ruled out a claim for dam­ages for breach of of­fi­cial duty. The fact that em­ploy­ees of the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity held shares in Wir­e­card AG was also “not immoral”.

The de­cision of the Frank­furt Higher Re­gional Court is not yet final.

Action Options For Investors

How­ever, ag­grieved Wir­e­card in­vestors should not be un­settled by this rul­ing. The law­yers from the law firm Schirp & Part­ner already as­sumed when the Wir­e­card scan­dal be­came known that a law­suit against BAFin would have little chance of suc­cess. In­stead, we re­com­mend that those who are will­ing to sue as­sert their claims against Wir­e­card AG’s long-​standing aud­itor, Ernst & Young (EY).

In­jured parties can file in­di­vidual law­suits or join the Cap­ital In­vestor Model Pro­ceed­ings (KapMuG), which have been opened in the mean­time. In such pro­ceed­ings, the claims of ag­grieved in­vestors are bundled and legal dis­putes are re­solved in a single trial with a model plaintiff. The law firm Schirp & Part­ner rep­res­ents the largest group of sus­pen­ded pro­ceed­ings and has ap­plied to rep­res­ent the model plaintiff in or­der to ad­vance the KapMuG pro­ceed­ings as quickly as pos­sible and in the in­terests of the ag­grieved parties.

We will be happy to re­gister for the model pro­ceed­ings on your be­half. Fur­ther in­form­a­tion on the Wir­e­card scan­dal and our ac­tion against EY can be found here.

Further Purchase Offers For P&R Insolvency Claims

Schirp & Part­ner rep­res­ent an Anglo-​Saxon fin­an­cial in­vestor mak­ing new pur­chase of­fers for P&R in­solv­ency claims. (more…)

Premium savings contracts: BGH again strengthens consumer rights

Ac­cord­ing to a rul­ing by the Fed­eral Court of Justice on Oc­to­ber 6, 2021, savers who have con­cluded premium sav­ings con­tracts can now de­mand money back.

This is how the judges in Karls­ruhe ruled on the first model de­clar­at­ory ac­tion brought by con­sumer pro­tec­tion groups con­cern­ing un­law­ful clauses on vari­able in­terest rates in many older premium sav­ings con­tracts. The rul­ing now gives con­sumers a tailwind.

The con­tracts in ques­tion are premium sav­ings con­tracts con­cluded mainly in the 1990s and 2000s, which con­tain clauses en­titling the banks to ad­just the in­terest rate largely uni­lat­er­ally and freely. As a res­ult, savers re­ceived too little in­terest over many years.

As early as 2004 and 2010, the Fed­eral Su­preme Court de­clared these in­terest rate ad­just­ments in­valid be­cause they were too opaque for cus­tom­ers. The banks then changed the in­terest rate clauses – but to the det­ri­ment of con­sumers. As a res­ult, the Leipzig con­sumer as­so­ci­ation has now taken legal ac­tion all the way to the Fed­eral Court of Justice.

The XI Civil Sen­ate now de­cided that the clauses are in­valid be­cause of a vi­ol­a­tion of § 308 No. 4 BGB, the chair­man Jür­gen El­len­ber­ger be­came clear to the sav­ings bank: “The sample de­fend­ant has the right to change in the man­ner of a lord of the manor by post­ing in the counter room. That is inadmissible.”

Now the ques­tion of the ref­er­ence in­terest rate must be cla­ri­fied. For the proper cal­cu­la­tion of the in­terest, the lower court, the OLG Dresden should have already made pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion spe­cific­a­tions, ac­cord­ing to the BGH, which re­ferred the case back to Dresden once again.

In the next months now thus the higher re­gional court must de­term­ine the ref­er­ence in­terest rate, so that savers can cal­cu­late ex­actly, how much money they can still ex­pect from the sav­ings bank.

The spe­cial­ized law­yers of the Kan­zlei Schirp & part­ner from Ber­lin have due to prac­tice of many years for more than 25 years com­pre­hens­ive ex­pert­ise in the bank and cap­ital mar­ket right. As a con­tact per­son for your fur­ther pro­ceed­ings, at­tor­ney Al­ex­an­dra Binia, spe­cial­ist at­tor­ney for bank­ing and cap­ital mar­ket law, and Dr. Wolfgang Schirp will be happy to an­swer any fur­ther ques­tions you may have.

CJEU strengthens consumer rights: “Revocation joker” for millions of consumer credit agreements

The CJEU found that many con­sumer loan agree­ments can still be re­voked years later. (more…)

Update in the Daimler emissions scandal – Hundreds of thousands of vans will now be asked for a software update

The fact that the Sprinter, Vito and Vi­ano mod­els are also af­fected by the emis­sions scan­dal has been known since 2019. Now Daimler AG has ap­par­ently suc­ceeded in de­vel­op­ing the soft­ware up­dates re­quired by the KBA and hav­ing them ap­proved by the KBA. As it be­came known, hun­dreds of thou­sands of Daimler drivers can now ex­pect a let­ter from Daimler AG ask­ing them to sub­ject their vehicles to the up­date. Daimler is run­ning the meas­ure un­der the re­call code NC3II6515R or NC2II651R.

The vans are equipped with an im­per­miss­ible de­feat device in the form of the coolant set­point tem­per­at­ure con­trol. This is now ap­par­ently to be re­moved as part of the soft­ware up­date. The coolant set­point tem­per­at­ure con­trol is soft­ware that en­sures that the rate of ex­haust gas re­cir­cu­la­tion (EGR) is re­duced out­side the test con­di­tions (NEDC test cycle) by ini­tially keep­ing the en­gine coolant tem­per­at­ure and thus the en­gine oil tem­per­at­ure low via the elec­tric­ally switched coolant ther­mo­static valve. Thus, an EGR map with lower rates is used in real road op­er­a­tion than un­der test con­di­tions. Lower­ing the EGR rate leads to in­creased ni­tro­gen ox­ide emissions.

Ac­cord­ing to our cur­rent in­form­a­tion, the vehicles af­fected by the re­call are from the Sprinter, Vito and Vi­ano series with the Euro 5 emis­sions stand­ard. These have the OM 651 series en­gine already known from the emis­sions scan­dal and were pro­duced between 2010 and 2018 (Sprinter) or between 2010 and 2014 (Vito, Viano).

Are you the owner of such a Daimler AG van and feel cheated? Re­gard­less of whether you have already re­ceived a re­call let­ter or not, we will be happy to ad­vise you.

WIRECARD AG files for Insolvency – Legal Action against EY is the best Way Out for aggrieved Shareholders, Bondholders and Derivative holders

Few minutes ago, Wir­e­card AG filed for in­solv­ency. This means that Wir­e­card AG is likely to be elim­in­ated as an op­pon­ent for legal pro­ceed­ings. Dam­aged in­vestors, how­ever, have the op­tion of re­ly­ing on Wirecard’s an­nual aud­itor, Ernst & Young Wirtschaft­s­prü­fungs­gesell­schaft (EY).

In­form­a­tion on the Law­suit against Ernst & Young »

The law firms Schirp & Part­ner and at­tor­ney Dr. Marc Lieb­scher have already filed class ac­tion law­suits against EY and are pre­par­ing fur­ther class ac­tion law­suits. This af­fects not only the ag­grieved share­hold­ers, but also all in­vestors who sub­scribed to the bond is­sued by Wir­e­card AG in 2019. Moreover, the hold­ers of de­riv­at­ives are also affected.

We can of­fer in­vestors who do not wish to bear the costs of a class ac­tion law­suit lit­ig­a­tion fin­an­cing through a renowned lit­ig­a­tion financier.

Dr. Wolfgang Schirp: “Un­for­tu­nately, this de­vel­op­ment was fore­see­able. It is fright­en­ing how long Wir­e­card AG was able to op­er­ate without be­ing ob­jec­ted to by the aud­it­ors. We have been mon­it­or­ing Wir­e­card AG since 2008 and have col­lec­ted very ex­tens­ive ma­ter­ial. It was al­ways clear that some­thing was wrong.”

Dr. Marc Lieb­scher: “We have suc­ceeded in win­ning a lit­ig­a­tion fin­an­cier for the class ac­tion suits. We as­sume that we will be able to file the next class ac­tions very soon.”

WIRECARD disaster of June 18th, 2020: Must EY compensate the investors?

Berlin-​based law firms Schirp & Part­ner and Dr. Marc Lieb­scher have filed their first law­suits against EY… (more…)

Diesel emissions scandal

Do not wait un­til your car is worth noth­ing! Claim your pur­chase price or an ad­equate new vehicle now. We en­force your rights against the car man­u­fac­turer, which built in the fraud soft­ware… (more…)

German Property Group GmbH, formerly Dolphin Capital GmbH: Payment Due

Dol­phin Cap­ital GmbH (later re­named as Dol­phin Trust GmbH and now un­der the name Ger­man Prop­erty Group… (more…)

BREXIT impact on UK life insurers

Poli­cy­hold­ers of a Brit­ish in­surer, such as Cler­ical Med­ical (now: Scot­tish Wid­ows Ltd.), Stand­ard Life, Scot­tish Mu­tual or Friends Provid­ent keep ask­ing the law firm SCHIRP & PART­NER. (more…)