On 27 January 2021, BaFin filed a criminal complaint to the public prosecutor’s office in Stuttgart against an employee on suspicion of insider trading. The employee, working in BaFin’s Securities Supervision Sector, had sold structured products with Wirecard AG shares as the underlying on 17 June 2020. On 18 June 2020, Wirecard AG publicly announced that there was still a lack of sufficient audit evidence on the existence of trust account balances totalling EUR 1.9 billion. The suspected case of insider trading was revealed during a special inspection conducted by the supervisory authority. BaFin immediately suspended the employee and initiated disciplinary proceedings.
In mid-October 2020, BaFin introduced stricter compliance rules for the personal securities transactions conducted by its staff members. Speculative financial transactions, i.e. short-term trading with derivative financial instruments or shares, for example, have since been prohibited.
