The Deutsche Bank executive has asked for an order on the Wirecard report

A senior executive at Deutsche Bank and a former EY partner who was in charge of Wirecard inspections has taken legal action in a report on the scandal to try to prevent a German parliamentary committee from appointing him.

Andreas Loetscher, who was one of the two main partners in the audit of EY’s Wirecard from 2015 to 2017 on Monday, asked the Berlin administrative court for an order to publish the report, which will be discussed in the Bundestag on Friday, the first anniversary Wirecard insolvency.

The move is part of a fight between former Wirecard inspectors and German lawmakers. EY is already embroiled in parliament over the publication of a special rigorous report by a special investigator who concluded that the audit had significant shortcomings.

People familiar with the matter told the FT that the request for a ban was filed in Loetscher’s private jurisdiction and that the move was not coordinated with his current or former employers. Deutsche did not want to comment and EY did not immediately respond to the request for comment.

The wirecard collapsed after it was acknowledged that there had never been 1.9 billion euros in corporate money. He had previously received qualified audits from EY for more than a decade.

Loetscher joined Deutsche’s accounting department in 2018 after spending more than two decades at EY. He left his post temporarily at the end of last year but continued to be an audit consultant.

He claimed that the change of job was the result of the commission’s “unsustainable suspicions”. At the time, Deutsche said it had happened “at Andreas’s request and agreed together.”

Loetscher’s work as chief auditor is public knowledge, as he personally signed the Wirecard audits, and his last name was mentioned in the publicly available annual results of the defunct group.

Last November, when he was invited as a witness to parliamentary hearings on the Wirecard scandal, he declined to answer questions, citing an investigation into the conduct of regulators.

Shortly afterwards, the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that a civil investigation had been launched by some members of the EY via Wirecard.

Loetscher, who has denied the wrongdoing, has argued that mentioning his name in a public report would violate his identity rights. His lawyers have suggested that his initials could be mentioned instead of his first and last name.

Loetscher and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a questionnaire from the FT.