KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) -A German high court rejected a claim from shareholders in defunct payments company Wirecard who were seeking a bigger share of the firm’s remaining assets.
The company collapsed in 2022 in the country’s biggest post-war fraud after conceding that 1.9 billion euros ($2.22 billion) it had booked in its accounts likely never existed.
Some 50,000 shareholders, foremost among them Union Investment, argued that since they themselves were victims of fraud by the company they should rank alongside creditors in insolvency proceedings, rather than in last place as is ordinarily the case.
Judges at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe rejected that argument.
“It’s not sufficient to demonstrate that shareholders were defrauded, because that ignores the fact that their aim was to gain an ownership share in the company,” the court wrote. “The shareholder has to bear the risks that follow from that.”
The collapse, following years of exposes in the Financial Times, was an embarrassment for German business and law enforcement, with critics charging that authorities had been reluctant to look too closely at what was seen as a rare German digital champion.
The company’s remaining assets are worth around 650 million euros, while outstanding claims against the company run to 15.4 billion euros, meaning shareholders will likely be left with nothing.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Ursula Knapp in Karlsruhe, writing by Thomas Escritt, editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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