Wirecard Auditors Face German Lawmakers’ ‘Considerable Doubts’
- Ernst & Young accountants expected to appear for questioning
- EY says auditors can’t answer, citing confidentiality rules
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A German parliamentary committee will try to question Wirecard AG’s auditors over their alleged failure to spot fraud at the payments company, as lawmakers continue their probe into who’s to blame for the nation’s biggest-ever accounting scandal.
Lawmakers in Berlin have called the auditors, three of whom are still with accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP, which is under fire after it signed off on Wirecard’s books without spotting that 1.9 billion euros ($2.3 billion) listed among its assets didn’t exist. EY auditors Christian Orth, Stefan Heissner and Martin Dahmen have been ordered to answer questions about what went wrong. The fourth, Andreas Loetscher, left EY in 2018 to become Deutsche Bank AG’s head of accounting.