There has been a new search at the investment company DWS in connection with allegations of so-called greenwashing. A good 50 investigators from the police and public prosecutor’s office searched the DWS offices in Frankfurt on January 16th. Previously this had Handelsblatt reported about it.
A spokesman for DWS said: “We provided further information on site at the request of the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office.” This concerns the publicly known investigations in connection with the greenwashing allegations made against DWS. The Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office could not initially be reached for comment.
The investigators’ visit is a further setback for DWS and its majority owner, the Deutsche Bank Group. It’s not just the greenwashing issue that is slowly becoming a permanent problem. After an IT change, Deutsche Bank has been struggling for months with massive service deficiencies at its former subsidiary Postbank.
DWS hoped for an early conclusion to the vexed issue
At DWS, however, the hope of a closure prevailed recently after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined it 19 million euros for greenwashing in the fall. All in all, an unpleasant accusation, as the SEC was able to prove to the fund company that it had presented itself as more sustainable than it actually is. In addition, the punishment was quite high. Nevertheless, people in Frankfurt welcomed the Americans’ decision almost with relief – in the assumption that it would gradually bring to an end the investigation, which has now been going on for years.
After the SEC, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office will soon stop its investigation, although probably against conditions, DWS said. Then the vexed issue could be closed. DWS boss Stefan Hoops said at the time that they were in “very constructive discussions” with criminal investigators. But the discussions don’t seem to have been all that constructive. In any case, there is hardly any other way to explain why the investigators have now moved out again.
First search at DWS in 2022
The origin of the DWS affair dates back three years and not only cost the largest German investment company many millions of euros, but also caused massive damage to its reputation. At the beginning of 2021, ex-sustainability head Desirée Fixler initially criticized the company internally that DWS was selling itself too sustainably, but this did not get through to management. On the contrary: Shortly afterwards, the DWS management not only let their employment contract expire during the probationary period, but also sent a memo to the media in which it was suggested that they had lacked “traction”. The American saw her reputation destroyed and contacted the Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2021. Several US authorities, as well as the German financial regulator and finally even the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, then began investigations.
In May 2022, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office searched the DWS for the first time, after which the then DWS boss Asoka Wöhrmann had to resign. Karl von Rohr, most recently head of the DWS supervisory board and deputy head of Deutsche Bank, has now left the group, which is also said to have had something to do with his handling of the issue. For a year now, the public prosecutor’s office has also been investigating Wöhrmann personally, who has since moved to the Augsburg real estate company Patrizia as CEO. Both DWS and him are suspected of investment fraud. DWS and Wöhrmann have always rejected the allegations.