German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz announced yesterday that he will restructure the BaFin, the financial market watchdog, so that it gets more powers to intervene in time. Cases like Wirecard, with fake statistics and illegal market activities as a non-registered non-bank, will be prevented in the future.
Among the measures to be implemented, Scholz is said by insiders to be considering giving BaFin direct powers to look at figures of banks and companies, without having to wait for a report by the special investigative unit in place today. BaFin will, furthermore, be enabled to carry out unannounced investigative probes at banks and companies at any time. All of that definitely requires visibly more personnel, which Scholz promised to hire for BaFin.
