Following the collapse of Wirecard last week, the German FinTech is now facing intense scrutiny from the authorities.
On Wednesday, police and public prosecutors raided the company’s headquarters in Munich as well as four other properties in Germany and Austria, Reuters reported.
At the same time, prosecutors said that they were widening their investigation to include suspected fraud in addition to market manipulation and falsifying accounts.
Having already been investigating Wirecard’s former CEO Markus Braun and COO Jan Marsalek, the prosecutors now siad that they were also investigating the company’s CFO Alexander von Knoop and chief product officer Susanne Steidl.
As FinTech Global reported last week, Braun stepped down as CEO on Friday June 19 before being turning himself in on Monday June 22. He was later released on a €5m bail.
The news comes as the FinTech community is reeling from the news of the missing €1.9bn ($2.1bn) in Wirecard’s finances and its subsequent collapse.
For a few days last weekend and the beginning of this week, FinTech startups like Curve, ANNA Money and Holvi were forced to suspend some of their services after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered Wirecard UK to freeze all of its assets and regulated activities. The consequence of the suspended service was that the customers depending on these FinTechs were unable to access their money.
They were able to resume business on Tuesday June 30 after the FCA allowed Wirecard to resume operational activity. That being said, companies like Curve and Revolut have already announced that they are migrating their services away from Wirecard.
Auditor Ernst & Young (EY) and BaFin have both faced criticism for not sounding the alarm or moving to act on information earlier.
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