Charges have been brought against a former manager of the audit firm. He is said to have betrayed internal information from the Federal Ministry of Health for sexual favors.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin has brought charges against a former team leader of an auditing company. The accusation is corruption and violation of private and official secrets. The authority did not name the auditing company, according to information from the Handelsblatt it is the Big Four company EY.
The high-ranking manager is said to have “given confidential information to a 29-year-old for a legal dispute with the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG),” said the Berlin public prosecutor in a press release. According to the findings of the investigators, the then 51-year-old accused had made the offer to the woman at a meeting in early July 2020 to help her “in exchange for sexual favors”.
There were then several meetings with “physical approaches”. The woman had sent the man “provocative pictures”. Afterwards, the EY examiner is said to have provided them with internal test reports, for example, according to the public prosecutor.
EY released employees
When asked, EY emphasized that it had taken the allegations against the former employee very seriously. Investigations were immediately initiated by an external law firm. “During the course of the investigation, the employee concerned left in autumn 2021,” said an EY spokesman.
The company has a strict compliance management system and pays strict attention to compliance with legal requirements when processing all mandates. “Violations of confidentiality obligations will not be tolerated by EY,” said the spokesman. The ex-manager’s lawyer has not yet responded to short-term inquiries.
The EY manager advised the BMG on the purchase of respiratory masks during the corona crisis between July 2020 and January 2021. At the time, as the managing partner of a GmbH, the 29-year-old was conducting a civil lawsuit against the Federal Ministry of Health over contracts for the delivery of respiratory masks.
The public prosecutor’s office has also filed charges against them. The prosecutors accuse her of incitement to take bribes and bribery in three cases each. In January 2021, she is said to have tried to hire the manager “to get a new contract for the purchase of respiratory masks with the BMG”.
In September 2021, the Tagesspiegel reported on the alleged scandal. According to a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office, the newspaper indirectly triggered the investigation. First there were internal investigations at the ministry and EY. Both then filed criminal charges.
According to the Tagesspiegel, the 29-year-old’s company followed the call of the then Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn in spring 2020 and delivered respiratory masks to the ministry. A low six-digit euro amount is said to have been paid for this. There was a dispute about the money.
At the time, EY was an intermediary for processing the contracts of the BMG, and almost all communication with the dealers is said to have gone through the consulting firm.
Chats are intended to provide evidence of the transfer of information
It is undisputed that the manager and the young woman then met. Some of the meetings are said to be documented, among other things, by photos taken by a private detective who, according to the Tagesspiegel, is said to have been commissioned by the woman’s husband, who had apparently become suspicious. Lawyers for the ex-EY employee told the newspaper that the contact with the woman was “completely mutual”.
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At the time, EY initially stated to the Tagesspiegel that the allegations were “very unspecific” and “never raised in a verifiable, concrete way”.
The public prosecutor’s office obviously came to different conclusions in the course of their investigations. According to the Tagesspiegel, chats saved by the woman should show how the EY employee sent her confidential information from the Ministry of Health.
After the Wirecard balance sheet scandal, the affair again damaged EY’s reputation, although the dimension is not comparable. In the Wirecard case, numerous shareholders are demanding damages from EY because the company had signed off on the payment service provider’s balance sheets for years. The auditing authority Apas recently imposed tough sanctions on the company.
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