2023-12-22 13:46:50
A new lawsuit filed by an investor seeks more than 700 million euros ($771.40 million) in damages from accounting firm EY for its role in auditing Wirecard’s accounts before its 2020 bankruptcy, said a group of shareholders.
The 80,000-page complaint represents 13,000 individual and institutional investors and was filed in a Munich court on Friday, shareholder protection group DSW said.
This is one of several legal actions EY is facing in this matter.
EY had no immediate comment. EY has already rejected claims for damages made once morest it in the Wirecard affair.
Wirecard’s fall has shaken Germany’s business community, placing politicians who supported it under intense scrutiny, as well as regulators who took years to investigate allegations regarding the payments company.
Wirecard ended up filing for bankruptcy in June 2020, owing its creditors almost $4 billion, following revealing a €1.9 billion hole in its accounts that EY said was the result of fraud sophisticated on a global scale.
Klaus Nieding, a lawyer representing shareholders in the lawsuit, said EY should have seen “relatively easily that the alleged 1.9 billion did not exist in Wirecard’s corresponding accounts, because” another auditor later saw it. “discovered very quickly”.
($1 = 0.9074 euros) (Reporting by Tom Sims. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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