Wirecard: Insolvency Administrator Publishes 4th Status Report

In the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to the as­sets of Wir­e­card AG, in­solv­ency ad­min­is­trator Dr. Mi­chael Jaffé has pub­lished his fourth status re­port at the end of 2022.

In it, Mr. Jaffé makes it clear that one of the fo­cal points of the furhter pro­cessing of the pro­ceed­ings will be the (con­ten­tious) en­force­ment of claims against former ex­ec­ut­ive bod­ies, such as the former Chair­man Dr. Markus Braun. How­ever, the en­force­ment of the claims would in­volve a great deal of time and ef­fort. The pending legal dis­putes are likely to take sev­eral more years.

In ad­di­tion, the in­solv­ency ad­min­is­tra­tion worked in­tens­ively dur­ing the audit period on furthe cla­ri­fic­a­tion of the facts. Par­tic­u­lar fo­cus was placed on the so-​called TPA busi­ness (third -party busi­ness). To this end, the in­solv­ency ad­min­is­trator was able to in­spect the ac­count state­ments of the trust ac­counts in ques­tion and as­cer­tain that the al­leged and ac­coun­ted TPA trans­ac­tion could never have ex­is­ted. Dr. Jaffé thus clearly con­tra­dicts the ac­count given by former Wir­e­card CEO Markus Braun, who is cur­rently stand­ing trial be­fore the Mu­nich Re­gional Court. Braun denies the al­leg­a­tions made against him. Cur­rent in­form­a­tion on the crim­inal trail can be found here.

Are share­hold­ers cred­it­ors in the on­go­ing in­solv­ency proceedings?

Ac­cord­ing to the in­solv­ency ad­min­is­trator, the ques­tion of whether (former) share­hold­ers of Wir­e­card AG are cred­it­ors in the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings in the rang of § 38 InsO or not posed a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge. In this re­gard, the fund com­pany Union in­vest­ment had ini­ti­ated de­clar­at­ory pro­ceed­ings. On Novem­ber 23, 2022, the Mu­nich I Re­gional Court ruled against the former share­holder and dis­missed the ac­tion. This means that share­hold­ers can­not re­gister their claims as cred­it­ors in the rang of § 38 InsO. Thus, the claims can only be ser­viced after other cred­it­ors (e.g. sup­pli­ers and lenders) have been satisfied.

How­ever both the in­solv­ency ad­min­is­trator and we at the law firm Schirp & Part­ner do not ex­pect this rul­ing to be­come leg­ally bind­ing. Rather, the Fed­eral Court of Just­ive will have to rule on this fun­da­mental issue.

Due to the de­cision of the re­gional court Mu­nich a state­ment of the de­mands of the share­hold­ers to the in­solv­ency table is not pos­sible at present, com­mu­nic­ated the in­solv­ency mad­min­is­trator fur­ther. Bond­hold­ers are ex­pressly not af­fected by this decision.

The next re­view date has been set for Oc­to­ber 19, 2023.

All in­form­a­tion on the Wir­e­card scan­dal and the pos­sible courses of ac­tion for ag­grieved in­vestors can be found here on our homepage.