Reuters
As a financial technology firm, albeit one that owned a bank, Wirecard was long considered as being in a grey area when it came to traditional banking supervision - and that ambiguity is being seized on by various authorities to shift the blame. Germany’s financial regulator BaFin has been quick to say that central banks also had a say in how Wirecard was supervised while the company’s home state of Bavaria has said it was not responsible either because Wirecard was not a financial firm. Following allegations of fraud in a report published in 2016, the authorities twice discussed whether to tighten supervision of Wirecard but took no action.