German justice has canceled the accounts of the former fintech Wirecard, exposing shareholders already cheated by the fraudulent bankruptcy of this digital payments company to have to repay the dividends received for 2017 and 2018.
The district court of Munich (south) declared the ‘nullity of the annual financial statements of Wirecard AG as of December 31, 2017 and December 31, 2018 as well as the resolutions for the appropriation of profits of the general meetings’ which resulted therefrom, according to a press release released Thursday.
Clearly, justice cancels the dividends received in respect of these exercises by shareholders, investors and small holders, on the basis of posted profits.
The Munich company, a former German digital payments flagship, collapsed in June 2020 when its leaders admitted that 1.9 billion euros (1.97 billion francs) in assets, or a quarter of the size of the balance sheet, did not actually exist.
Wirecard paid a dividend of 0.20 euro cents per share in 2019, for the year ended December 2018, and 0.18 euro cents in 2018, for the year 2017, according to the annual reports consulted. by AFP.
This represented a total cash outflow close to €50 million, at €24.7 million in 2019 and €22.2 million in 2018.
The court ruled in favor of the judicial administrator of Wirecard, who claimed the nullity of the two balance sheets considered by alleging massive accounting fraud to inflate the company’s balance sheets.
The judgment reports an ‘overvaluation’ of assets representing around 40% of the size of the respective balance sheets, i.e. nearly 1.9 billion euros in 2017 and just over 2.3 billion euros in 2018.
Pornography and gambling
The scandal revealed that part of the products accounted for as payment services did not come from Wirecard but from third parties, due to the absence of their own licenses or because these third parties operated high-risk activities such as pornography or gambling.
Founded at the turn of the year 2000, Wirecard presented itself for years as a rapidly growing and extremely successful company, even succeeding in its entry into the Dax 30, the cream of German stock exchange values.
Its bankruptcy shook the financial center, splashing the passage of the auditors of EY who had certified the accounts, and the supervisor Bafin who had seen nothing coming.
Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun is set to appear in a criminal trial soon, as searches continue to locate his right-hand man, Jan Marsalek, who has been on the run since 2020.
/ATS
