More than five years after the spectacular collapse of Wirecard AG, the scandal that once promised to reshape global fintech has instead exposed deep flaws in Europe’s systems of financial oversight and accountability.
The outrage that followed the discovery of €1.9bn in missing funds has faded, but the legal and moral reckoning drags on fragmented, opaque, and frustratingly inconclusive.
The latest rulings in Munich have all but extinguished hopes that Ernst & Young Germany, Wirecard’s long-time auditor, will face direct liability.
German judges concluded that EY’s annual audit opinions were not “public capital-market information” under German law. It is a technical argument, but one with devastating implications: investors who relied on those audits cannot claim compensation from EY Germany.
For thousands of shareholders and bondholders, this means the core route to damages has been effectively closed.
Responsibility that once seemed obvious has dissolved into legal abstraction. EY’s role may have been central to the deception, but the courts say it owed no duty to those deceived.
The lack of publicly accessible litigation updates or transparent reporting on claim management has eroded confidence. Without accountability and communication, litigation funding risks becoming just another speculative layer in an already over-complex legal ecosystem.
Wirecard was an international enterprise headquartered in Germany, with Asian subsidiaries, Irish banks, and investors around the world.
Yet its legal aftermath remains stuck in national silos.
Germany’s collective-action mechanism, the KapMuG model proceeding, has proved too slow and narrow.
Consequently, many investor actions have migrated to the Netherlands, where Dutch “foundation” structures allow cross-border claims under more flexible European rules.
The effect is a jurisdictional tangle: a political scandal in Germany has transformed into a transnational legal labyrinth.
Even if Germany’s criminal courts ultimately convict former CEO Markus Braun and others, those verdicts will do little to restore investors’ losses or clarify global auditor accountability.
For the litigation-funding sector, Wirecard was both an opportunity and a test of integrity. Firms such as LitFin stepped in to finance large bundles of investor claims, partnering with law firms like Pinsent Masons and advocacy groups such as SdK – Schutzgemeinschaft der Kapitalanleger.
In this structure, LitFin finances, Pinsent Masons litigates, and SdK organises the claimant base.
Yet the division of responsibilities has also created confusion. Investors often struggle to see who directs the case, how settlement decisions are made, or when funds might be distributed. For an industry built on trust and risk, transparency remains its weakest point.
Inside Germany, there are reportedly seven distinct types of lawsuits still pending against Wirecard, ranging from individual investor suits to institutional recovery claims.
Insiders say that while some financing exists, the overall direction of these cases “leads nowhere.”
Five years after the crash, most investors remain in limbo waiting for clarification or simply waiting for payouts that may not come for another five years.
Since 2021, LitFin has not publicised any major courtroom victories. Its once-active media presence went quiet after 2023.
The lack of publicly accessible litigation updates or transparent reporting on claim management has eroded confidence. Without accountability and communication, litigation funding risks becoming just another speculative layer in an already over-complex legal ecosystem.
The Wirecard proceedings were meant to show that collective action could deliver justice; instead, they now highlight how hard it is to keep such promises without sunlight.
Wirecard’s fall exposed the frailty of European corporate oversight, the limits of national courts in global frauds, and the fragility of trust in the auditing profession.
The scandals of 2020 have become the procedural purgatories of 2025.
For litigation funders and their law-firm partners, transparency and communication are no longer optional; they are essential to credibility. Investors deserve more than silence and deflection; they deserve proof that justice is still possible.
Five years on, the Wirecard story remains unfinished.
And unless those tasked with seeking justice open their processes to scrutiny, its final chapter may be one of quiet disillusionment rather than accountability.
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Michal Vit is an assistant p[rofessor at the Metropolitan University Prague. He is also a board member of a think tank Eurothink (Skopje, North Macedonia). Previously he was associated with the Institute for European Policy (IEP), Berlin and EUROPEUM, Prague. He focuses on researching organised crime, security dynamics on the south eastern frontier of EU and EU enlargement.
Michal Vit is an assistant p[rofessor at the Metropolitan University Prague. He is also a board member of a think tank Eurothink (Skopje, North Macedonia). Previously he was associated with the Institute for European Policy (IEP), Berlin and EUROPEUM, Prague. He focuses on researching organised crime, security dynamics on the south eastern frontier of EU and EU enlargement.