Investigators from the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office and officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) searched the business premises of the investment company DWS in Frankfurt again on Thursday. It’s about the ongoing investigation into suspected investment fraud (here greenwashing). The Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office announced that the authority was executing a search warrant dated January 30th. The measure, in which three public prosecutors and 30 BKA officials were involved, was still ongoing on Thursday. A DWS spokesman said it would continue to cooperate fully with authorities to resolve this investigation as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office confirmed that DWS was still willing to cooperate.
This is the second visit by the authorities in around three weeks. It wasn’t until mid-January that around 50 DWS investigators paid a visit. At the time, the public prosecutor’s office said the search served to further clarify the allegations. Unlike in January, this time the investigators came – just on the day of Deutsche Bank’s annual press conference – but without prior notice. This now raises the question of whether DWS is really cooperating as well as it says, or whether the judiciary is more interested in “negotiating” a higher fine in this way, as corporate insiders suspect.
The origins of the DWS affair date back three years. At the beginning of 2021, Desirée Fixler, the former head of sustainability at DWS, initially criticized internally that the fund company was selling itself too sustainably. Shortly afterwards, however, DWS not only let its contract expire, but also issued a memo to the media suggesting that it had lacked “traction”. The American saw her reputation destroyed and turned to the in the summer of 2021 Wall Street Journal. Several US authorities, as well as the German financial regulator and the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, then began investigations.
The fund company received a visit from investigators for the first time at the end of May 2022, which ultimately cost the then DWS CEO Asoka Wöhrmann his office. At that time, employees of the public prosecutor’s office, the financial regulator Bafin and the BKA searched not only the headquarters of DWS, but also of the parent company, Deutsche Bank. For a year now, investigations have not only been carried out against unknown persons, but also against Wöhrmann personally. Wöhrmann, who is now head of the Augsburg real estate company Patrizia, has always denied the allegations, as has DWS. Greenwashing refers to fraudulent labeling of information about sustainability aspects of investment funds. Stefan Hoops, Wöhrmann’s successor at the head of DWS, had at least admitted to “exuberant” marketing and promised to improve sustainability processes.