German Watchdog Says He Has Support After Wirecard Criticism

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s top financial watchdog said he still has backing to remain in his job, despite stinging criticism from opposition lawmakers over his part in the failure to unearth alleged irregularities at Wirecard AG.

“I serve my country and Europe and as long as my country and Europe trust me -- and I feel that and it’s relayed to me very clearly -- I will continue to carry out my duties,” BaFin President Felix Hufeld said on Wednesday at a conference in Frankfurt.

Wirecard’s collapse has become an increasingly political issue as the country gears up for elections next year and the departure of Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of Europe’s biggest economy. While the government works to overhaul financial supervision and prevent a repeat of the country’s biggest corporate fraud in living memory, opposition lawmakers have singled out BaFin and Hufeld for criticism.

“If you’re president of BaFin, you have to be able to deal with that,” Hufeld, 59, said of the calls for him to quit. “If you can’t, you need to look for another job, which I’m not doing.”

Hufeld said he wasn’t surprised that German lawmakers said Tuesday they will pursue a full parliamentary investigation, given it’s their job. “However long this takes, we will continue to energetically do our bit by presenting every crumb of information that’s relevant,” he said.

“We need to relentlessly clear up what happened and why it happened,” in order to draw the right conclusions and prevent something like this from occurring again, he said.

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