Merkel, a Week Into Wirecard Scandal, Says It’s ‘Worrisome’

(Bloomberg) -- It’s been a week since one of Germany’s biggest corporate scandals started and Chancellor Angela Merkel only just made her first comment.

Wirecard is a “a worrisome case”, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said during a news conference on Friday. “Naturally, it’s about preventing damage to Germany as a financial industry location. That’s why weaknesses of the control mechanisms, where they appear, must also be fixed.”

The digital-payments company has long been hyped as a German fintech star, but its insolvency filing this week is shaping up to be one of the country’s biggest accounting scandals ever. The collapse began last week with the admission that more than $2 billion in cash was missing and has since shaken Germany’s political classes and prompted calls for a comprehensive inquiry.

The government was initially slow to react. First it was the head of the financial regulator BaFin who admitted mistakes earlier this week, then Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Economy Minister Peter Altmaier warned of the potential damage to the reputation of the German financial industry and the country itself.

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