The CEO of German audit watchdog Apas, Ralf Bose, on Thursday admitted that he traded Wirecard shares while investigating the company, just weeks before its collapse, German media reported.
Bose was appearing before a parliamentary investigative committee of the Bundestag and immediately faced calls for his dismissal, with the chair of the conservative CDU’s faction in the committee, Matthias Hauer, calling the revelation “strong stuff.”
“Such behavior cannot remain without consequences for [Bose] personally,” Hauer said.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said the confession was “disconcerting,” adding that he would discuss the matter with “everyone involved.”
Altmaier’s ministry is in charge of supervising Apas, which in turn is responsible for supervising auditors such as KPMG and Ernst & Young (EY), the latter of which audited Wirecard’s balance sheets for years until it collapsed following a corruption scandal earlier this year.
The payments-technology company, whose market value once topped €24 billion, filed for insolvency in July after acknowledging that €1.9 billion of cash it had claimed to hold in escrow accounts in the Philippines didn’t actually exist.
Asked why he decided to invest in Wirecard even though KPMG had already published a report on the company that flagged many of its problems, Bose said he believed in Wirecard’s business model.
Danyal Bayaz, a Green lawmaker on the committee, accused Bose of “appalling ignorance with regard to an obvious conflict of interest.”