Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#71

Post by levosmetalo » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #29

chki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are. This is obviously not true. There have been numerous uncovered political scandals in Germany that have led to politicians and managers loosing their job. Christian Wulff (Former German President), Guttenberg (f…

Guttenberg had to resign because his doctoral thesis was full of plagiarism. Even the introduction was plagiarized - but with small changes that made it clear that an attempt had been made to hide the plagiarism. Guttenberg's public image rested on the idea that he was a morally upright, well composed, competent businessman, along with his noble lineage and family castle. The revelations about his thesis destroyed hi…

At least he resigned when he was caught.

Francisca Giffey, the Family Minister, never resigned when her doctor thesis was found plagiarized.

Also von der Leyen, former German Defense Minister and current European Commission leader didn't resign when she was found that she falsified her official CV.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#72

Post by usrusr » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

maze-le wrote: post #26

> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but you are in danger of getting a fraudulent "psychiatric diagnosis" if you are a tax investigator uncovering dirt about some politicians or their cronies.[0][1] In this case the investigator got free, but I am sure there are some cases out there of people who di…

Well, that's an example that I'd consider specifically Bavarian, where CSU has been ruling for longer than the CCP has been ruling the PRC (no joke, if you ignore the wartime years the CCP already held power pre-PRC). On a national level things aren't looking quite as grim.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#73

Post by AlexandrB » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #68

yesplorer wrote: post #34

Softbank invested $1 billion in Wirecard just under a year ago. Son isn't having a good time around these times.

Actually it did not - SoftBank employees contributed into a special purpose fund created for this investment, and that fund bought a convertible bond issued by Wirecard. Although it has been reported as a "SoftBank investment", it's pretty clear that no SoftBank money was part of the deal.

That's almost worse. The fact that SoftBank employees were willing to pile their own money into this fraud should tell you something about the due diligence they're doing when dealing with other people's money.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#74

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

chki wrote: post #16

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

Also, under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine or Belarus.[1] If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insa…

>If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are. This is obviously not true. There have been numerous uncovered political scandals in Germany that have led to politicians and managers loosing their job. Christian Wulff (Former German President), Guttenberg (f…

[deleted]

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#75

Post by allendoerfer » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

levosmetalo wrote: post #67

chki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are. This is obviously not true. There have been numerous uncovered political scandals in Germany that have led to politicians and managers loosing their job. Christian Wulff (Former German President), Guttenberg (f…

Even though losing the job is not a punishment, not everyone even lost his job. Andreas Sheuer is still in charge of transport as a federal Minister, despite the 500,000,000 € heavy corruption scandal. Von der Leyen got even "promoted" to EU-lead position after heavy corruption scandal last year when she was a Defense Minister of Germany. Not only Germany, but in the whole EU commission leadership it would be hard to…

Scheuer is my personal pet peeve. His last act was to create road traffic regulations, except he made some procedural errors, so 16 states have to roll them back and implement them again once it has been properly voted on the law. All that after evaporating 500.000.000 € in a pissing contest everyone knew he was going to lose.

The guy is corrupt and comically incompetent, but he just seems invincible. Why is he still in office? My theory is, that it has something to do with his dialect and his overall slightly idiotic appeareance. Though not on the same level as Trump or Boris Johnson, still that seems to give him some sort of protection, because people do not expect anything from him in the first place.

But then again, like OP correctly said: Europes leader has a corruption scandal at home, deleted evidence, the whole thing, but just keeps doing her thing.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#76

Post by slightwinder » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #36

DangerousPie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that the investment in copper was the wrong decision, but according to that article the minister actually sold his shares to Nixdorf (now Siemens?) immediately before becoming a minister. So I'm not quite sure if this is actually a case of corruption or just a case of being too conservative and incompetent (which is also quite widespread in politics).

He sold his shares hours(!) before being signed on as minister and he sold them to the company that benefited the most from the copper cabling that he pushed for. How you can mistake this obvious corruption for incompetence is beyond me.

> He sold his shares hours(!) before being signed on as minister

This is normal procedure. There is a rather short timeframe between appointment and becoming a minister. Of course did he sold it only after he know it would be a problem.

> How you can mistake this obvious corruption for incompetence is beyond me.

He had no benefits personally, so it's not corruption.

This is just a nice story you tell the kids to give them a scapegoat, ignoring the historical context. This happend 1982, when Internet did not even exist yet. And fiber at the time wasn't really great as today. Copper probably was indeed the better solution, consicdering that survived the decades, where fiber from that time has already become useless long ago.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#77

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

qayxc wrote: post #44

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but did they got to jail or have their earnings confiscated? Losing your job is not much of a deterrent when you've filled your pockets with bribes you get to keep and have a nice pension waiting for you while being put on the payroll as an external consultant to the $BIG_CORP you helped during your rule.

In order for any of that to happen you'd have to be convicted of a crime first. This would involve stripping immunity first, which doesn't happen all that often and involves approval from the parliament. Naturally, this is a partisan issue and members of the ruling parties would obviously vote against it, making it very difficult to achieve in practise. This is common practise in most democratic countries, though and…

But that still means that the OP was mostly right: these people are untouchable, so they can steal with impunity.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#78

Post by squiggleblaz » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #24

solstice wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state government of lower Saxony (the state where VW is based) owns 25% of VW. I don't think that's a coincidence. Edit: looks like it's 20%

how can a company be both owned by, but also regulated by "the same" entity? that is a conflict of interest aint it?

I would have thought the federal government should be taking the lead in regulating a car manufacturer. It's not like their cars will be limited to use in one state.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#79

Post by thomaskcr » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

Not only that, they went after the short sellers who were writing about it publicly.

> Germany's pursuit of short sellers began when Perring’s previously little-known outfit, called Zatarra Research, published its report about Wirecard.

> In March, just three months before Wirecard’s collapse, prosecutors dropped their case against Perring after he agreed to make a donation of an undisclosed sum to a charitable organization.

Finance watchdogs are archaeologist organizations when it comes to fraud, they come in after the fraud has blown up and sift through the evidence to see what happened. Between that, they are busy going after people with too little money to defend themselves mostly.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/germany-long-lonely-campaign-batt...

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#80

Post by dsabanin » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

maze-le wrote: post #26

> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but you are in danger of getting a fraudulent "psychiatric diagnosis" if you are a tax investigator uncovering dirt about some politicians or their cronies.[0][1] In this case the investigator got free, but I am sure there are some cases out there of people who di…

I was thinking, that in a scary way, the psychiatric diagnosis for people investigating corruption in Russia or CCP does start to make sense.

It is such an extreme risk to go against these regimes, both to their and their relatives' safety and livelihoods that it makes their actions seem insane. Extreme risk-taking without regard for consequence, suicidal tendencies, paranoia towards the government, unbounded anxiety. At the same time, where they live – all of these are reasonable reactions of a thinking human being, consistent with their environment.

I want to stress, that this is more of an ironic observation. I admire the bravery of such people and I despise the current Russian regime, it was the biggest reason for my emigration.