BERLIN: Germany’s finance minister on Thursday denied responsibility for the collapse of payments firm Wirecard in a parliamentary inquiry that will also put Chancellor Angela Merkel in the hot seat.

Once a rising star in the booming fintech sector, Wirecard filed for bankruptcy last year after admitting that 1.9 billion euros ($2.3 billion) was missing from its accounts.

The company’s former chief executive Markus Braun and several other top executives were arrested on fraud and money-laundering charges. Lawmakers are investigating the political and regulatory failings that allowed the Wirecard cheating to go unnoticed for years, with critics saying early warning signs were ignored.

“The government does not bear responsibility for this large-scale criminal fraud,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told lawmakers investigating the case which he described as the “biggest accounting fraud scandal” in the history of post-war Germany.