Exclusive
Status: 01/28/2021 8:38 p.m.
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Wirecard has been lobbying for less strict gambling regulation in Germany for years. In addition, the group paid thousands of euros a month to lawyers and an ex-head of government, internal emails show.
By Philipp Eckstein, Jan Strozyk and Benedikt Strunz,
Ed
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The insolvent payment service provider Wirecard has lobbied in recent years for illegal gaming providers and their payment service providers to be prosecuted less strictly. That is evident from emails that Ed, WDR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung” (SZ) are available.
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Philipp Eckstein
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Jan Lukas Strozyk
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The documents also show that Wirecard hired several ex-politicians for its purposes, including the former Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust and the former Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Peter Harry Carstensen, both from the CDU.
Investigators dropped the case
Carstensen was apparently brokered by the law firm Hambach & Hambach. Lawyer Wulf Hambach, who has been a consultant to numerous gaming companies for years, advised the Wirecard management board intensively for years, according to the emails. Wirecard was among other things in 2017 through reporting by Ed, WDR and “SZ” came into the focus of investigators because the bank processed payments on a large scale for online casino providers that did not have a license in Germany.
After Ed-Information, the Munich I public prosecutor initiated an investigation against Wirecard. It was discontinued after years because the investigators said they could not understand the payments. Licenses for online casino games are not granted in Germany with limited exceptions in Schleswig-Holstein.
Visit to Hesse’s head of government
In February 2014 at the latest, Hambach brought the former Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Carstensen to Wirecard as a lobbyist. Together with a Wirecard board member, Burkhard Ley, Carstensen and Hambach visited the then Prime Minister of Hesse, Volker Bouffier (CDU), in Wiesbaden. In recent years, Hesse has been one of those federal states that have called for a mild treatment of illegal providers.
The Hessian State Chancellery confirmed the appointment on request. Wirecard apparently planned to take on central tasks in payment processing and player protection, said a spokesman. However, these “sovereign activities” are not transferable to private companies, so the conversation was inconsistent.
Hambach also wrote in an e-mail to Wirecard that Carstensen knew the Green Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, very well. A joint visit, as before in Wiesbaden, is “worthwhile”. With a meeting one could “take the wind out of the sails” of a measure planned at the time to block payment service providers of illegal online casinos, wrote Hambach. The state ministry in Baden-Württemberg left a request unanswered.
Carstensen passed on the cell phone number
The news shows that Carstensen initiated a meeting in 2015 between Hambach, the then Digital Commissioner of the European Union, Günther Oettinger (CDU), and a Wirecard manager in Brussels. In an email, Carstensen passed Oettinger’s mobile phone number on to Wirecard board member Ley. On request, Oettinger stated that he could not remember the exact content and the other participants of the meeting with Carstensen.
When confronted with the e-mails, Carstensen explains that he and Ley also met with the then Hamburg mayor and now Federal Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz. The aim of the talks was to exchange ideas about addiction prevention in gambling. Scholz did not answer a short-term inquiry about this. Carstensen also confirmed the meetings with Oettinger and Bouffier, but denied having been paid for by Wirecard or Hambach & Hambach. He “never worked as a lobbyist for Wirecard Bank”.
No comment from the ex-board
Hambach & Hambach only paid the travel and accommodation costs for such appointments. When asked whether he had generally been paid by companies with a connection to the gaming industry after his resignation as Prime Minister, Carstensen said that he generally did not answer questions about his income. In October, the industry newspaper “Capital” reported on Carstensen’s lobbying activities for Wirecard.
Attorney Hambach stated that he could not provide any information on mandates due to the confidentiality obligation. In principle, however, it is common for companies to seek external advice on legal issues. With Carstensen one cooperates “in individual matters”. The former Wirecard board member Ley did not comment on the events. Ley left the Wirecard Group in 2018 as a member of the Management Board, but continued to work as a consultant for the group, including on the subject of gaming. The public prosecutor’s office is investigating Ley in connection with the Wirecard bankruptcy, and even had him temporarily taken into custody last year.
“Open-minded and activatable”
Wirecard also worked closely with the agency of the former First Mayor of Hamburg, Ole von Beust, the Von Beust & Coll. Company. The emails show that von Beust’s company and Wirecard renewed their consulting contract in November 2019. Accordingly, the agency was given the task of establishing contacts “cautiously and purposefully”.
It is a matter of “identifying politicians” who are “open-minded and can be activated” for concerns of German banks when it comes to online gambling, according to a contract from 2019. Wirecard initially paid 5,000 euros per month for the advisory services, later 7,500 euros – plus “reasonable travel expenses”. Von Beust had basically confirmed this as a witness in the Wirecard investigative committee. The “Wirtschaftswoche” had previously reported on this.
“Legalization of own business”
The SPD member of the Bundestag Cansel Kiziltepe is a member of the Wirecard investigation committee. She said it was telling that Wirecard’s lobbying efforts primarily concerned gambling regulation. “Under the guise of wanting to offer innovative regulation, Wirecard ultimately seemed to be primarily concerned with legalizing its own business,” she said. Kiziltepe therefore calls for a transparent lobby register.
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