Sounds vaguely familiar. Very vaguely. No, come to think of it, never heard of Wirecard.

It was an innocuous question, posed shortly before midnight some nine hours into an exhausting parliamentary hearing into the Wirecard scandal. “Did you ever actually own Wirecard shares?”

MPs will want to know why Merkel lobbied for Wirecard in China when reports about suspected fraud at the company had been in the public domain for months. Scholz will be asked to explain how BaFin, the financial regulator he oversees, not only failed to uncover the Wirecard fraud but went after short-sellers and Financial Times journalists who first highlighted irregularities at the company.