The lawyer has long been considered a shaky candidate in financial supervision.
(Photo: Bernd Roselieb/BaFin)
Frankfurt The financial supervisory authority Bafin is separating from its executive director Beatrice Freiwald after months of legal dispute. The supervisor is retiring “by virtue of a decision by the federal government as a member of the Bafin Board of Directors,” the authority said on Tuesday evening.
In addition to his other tasks, Bafin President Mark Branson will now also temporarily take care of the internal administration division, which Freiwald managed until the end. He is responsible for HR, IT, organization, budget and finance.
“Beatrice Freiwald is a civil servant for life,” said the Bafin. “She will continue her work in the public service.” The authority did not want to comment on the question of where exactly Freiwald will be used in the future.
Freiwald, whose contract as executive director actually ran until the beginning of 2024, had long been considered a shaky candidate in the Bafin. She was severely criticized in the Wirecard investigation committee, among other things because she was responsible for the Bafin whistleblower office, which did not adequately investigate information from whistleblowers about Wirecard.
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Above all, however, she was accused of handling the financial supervisory authority with private securities transactions by her employees. She is held responsible for the fact that compliance with the already quite permissive requirements before the collapse of Wirecard was also checked comparatively laxly. The regulations have now been tightened significantly.
>> Read here: Wirecard affair: Bafin neglected its internal controls for years
The Wirecard scandal had already cost former Bafin President Felix Hufeld and his deputy Elisabeth Roegele their jobs. Freiwald, on the other hand, tried to take legal action against her planned dismissal in advance, as a decision by the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court shows.
The parting words are short
The Federal Ministry of Finance informed Freiwald on October 14, 2021 that it intends to “dismiss her as Executive Director of Bafin for good cause”. According to the court, Freiwald considered her planned dismissal to be unlawful and therefore took legal action against it.
However, the administrative court in Berlin rejected her application for preventive legal protection. On August 30, the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg dismissed an appeal against this decision.
According to the court order, the Ministry of Finance justified the intended dismissal of Freiwald with the restructuring of the Bafin, among other things. In addition, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) and Bafin President Branson “did not have the necessary confidence that the technological transformation and personnel development could succeed under the management of the business area in question by the applicant”. Both are of central importance for the modernization of the Bafin.
The Bafin President had already as good as disempowered Freiwald internally.
(Photo: dpa)
The Higher Administrative Court also made it clear in its decision that it considers the planned dismissal of Freiwald to be justified for important reasons. After the Wirecard scandal, it was a matter of flanking an “objectively justified and politically necessary reorganization in terms of personnel policy and a publicly shaken trust in the quality of supervision and the qualifications of the people entrusted with it, including in terms of personnel, as quickly as possible to be able to recover”.
The fact that Freiwald should also go alongside Hufeld and Roegele is “by no means arbitrary”. Rather, it makes sense to “dismiss the member of the Board of Directors who was responsible at management level for the cross-sectional area of law and compliance, which encompasses all areas of financial supervision, during the events surrounding Wirecard AG – regardless of any specific personal allegations”.
According to the resolution, Freiwald most recently received an annual official salary of EUR 219,690.72 gross. The parting words from Bafin President Branson, who had already largely deprived Freiwald of power internally in the past few months, were short. “Beatrice Freiwald has worked with great commitment on the Board of Directors for the Bafin,” said Branson in the statement. “I thank her expressly for that.”
More: Internal emails and chats incriminate Markus Braun – Exclusive details on the charges against Wirecard boss