RTL Today - Ongoing embezzlement investigation: Caritas special committee meets with Spuerkeess and BGL BNP Paribas representatives

The prosecutor's investigation is ongoing while political actors are trying to catch up on how the Caritas scandal came to fruition and where the money ended up.

On Monday, the parliamentary special committee enters the next phase of their effort to recreate how the Caritas scandal started, with representatives of Spuerkeess being called to attend a meeting.

How much responsibility do the banks carry in the Caritas case, given that they approved transfers worth millions of euros? Were the transactions scrutinized, and were the control mechanisms working as intended? These are some of the questions which will surface, and possibly still remain unclear on Monday afternoon.

The summoned Spuerkeess representatives will be able to deliver information explaining the general mechanisms and procedures of a bank transfer. Nevertheless, when it comes to the specific Caritas file, the representatives will likely stay silent due to professional confidentiality.

The meeting with BGL BNP Paribas representatives might result in a similar scenario. As of now, the special committee has talked to representatives from the prosecutor's office, the surveillance committee of the finance sector CSSF, the audit and consulting firm PWC, members of the former Caritas management, representatives of the successor organisation HUT and members of the diocese.

Particularly striking was the testimony at the end of April from Tom Brassel, former Director of Operations at Caritas. He reported dysfunctions in governance – both in the management, where "one hand didn’t know what the other was doing", and in the board of directors, which he described as a kind of phantom entity.

Brassel also told the special commission that he had already expressed doubts about the credit lines to a member of the board of directors as early as June of last year.

At the center of the embezzlement case is the former Caritas finance director, who made transfers totaling more than 61 million euros and likely fell victim to the so-called "president scam." So far, nine people have been arrested by police, including in Bulgaria and France.

Currently operating under their third president, the Chamber's special committee underlines that it is not their mission to conduct a parallel investigation alongside the judiciary. Its purpose is to politically address the case and generally examine what improvements can be made – for example, whether the regulations governing control mechanisms need to be tightened.