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

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

#91

Post by marcinzm »

lima wrote: post #70
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…

The affair you're talking about happened more than a decade ago, it was a major and pretty unique scandal in Germany, and the "expert" has been convicted not only to pay damages, but was also found to be guilty of malpractice. The state eventually offered the investigators to be re-hired. There were no consequences for the "instigators" because, to my understanding, it couldn't be proven that there was criminal inten…

I mean, in Wirecard prosecutors literally went after short sellers with criminals charges. For years. They only dropped charges a few months ago after a donation was made to a charitable organization. Seems pretty similar and pretty corrupt to me.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts-germany...

edit: I guess "we'll ruin you and throw you in jail" is better than "we'll throw you out a window" but it's still pretty bad.

edit2: And if Wildcard hadn't imploded there'd have been no scandal about prosecutors going after critics. No issues with silencing complaints or limiting freedom of speech. Just another part of doing business against companies the government support.

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

#93

Post by camjohnson26 »

thomaskcr wrote: post #79

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 organ…

This is the true value of short sellers to the market. They were blowing the whistle on Wirecard for years before the regulators or company insiders did anything. The problem is they always look like fools while the company valuation goes up but then get vindicated all at once when it collapses, if it ever collapses.

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

#94

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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 generalizes to damn near every government (or any big powerful organization to some extent as well) ever. The only difference is that more money enables some governments to abstract it away and reduce the visibility of it better than others.

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

#95

Post by ketzu »

Mirioron wrote: post #84
lima wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The affair you're talking about happened more than a decade ago, it was a major and pretty unique scandal in Germany, and the "expert" has been convicted not only to pay damages, but was also found to be guilty of malpractice. The state eventually offered the investigators to be re-hired. There were no consequences for the "instigators" because, to my understanding, it couldn't be proven that there was criminal inten…

Is it unique? Didn't Gustl Mollath [0] also end up in a psychiatric facility and it started with him claiming that a bank was evading taxes? He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. After years in there it turned out that his claim about the tax evasion was reasonable. From what I can tell, he spent ~6 years locked up in a psychiatric facility and got €600,000 in damages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org…

Based on your "also": According to the spiegel article the investigators didn't end up in a psychiatric facility, but got a diagnosis of inability-to-work and pensioned.

The case for Mr. Mollath was much worse.

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

#96

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

AlexandrB wrote: post #73
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you're aware of all the details here. The special purpose vehicle also structured a transaction with Credit Suisse which effectively allowed the bonds to be resold immediately to institutional investors. The fund (i.e. SoftBank employees) had no ongoing risk exposure and pocketed the pre/post-deal spread in the share price.

Matt Levine has an article about that on Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-02/free-w...

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

#97

Post by netsharc »

qayxc wrote: post #66
netsharc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the comments here are about German government corruption and incompetence. The articles maybe old but the facts still haven't changed; the Euro was a bad thing (yeah, yeah, citation needed). I disagree with your insinuation that a UK publication must be against the Euro (such a cheap conclusion!), the Guardian does lean towards the left, but it is also a pro EU.

> Most of the comments here are about German government corruption and incompetence. Yet neither is addressed by the articles you linked. If illustrating corruption or incompetence was your intend, then you simply missed the mark with those articles. There's suitable, prominent and recent examples for both, but "Euro bad" definitely isn't one of them.

People praise the government for the stable economy, attributing this to competence. The truth is (in many economists' opinion) the stable economy is because of the bad construct pegging the European currencies, probably not because of good governance.

Sorry I can't provide you with proper up-to-date citations, but you declaring "that's not the case" does not make it the case. Well, me declaring "that is the case" does not make it the case either.

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

#98

Post by gumby »

dsabanin wrote: post #80
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…

BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested.

I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil.

OTOH the system has adapted to this constraint: since they have to be reported anyway the police have inverted the sense and adopted the “perp walk”, which prejudices the accused’s chances in court right up front. And of course extrajudicial punishment skips the whole apparatus in the first place...but that can happen anywhere.

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

#99

Post by peroporque »

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…

At the past 38C3 congress there was also an interesting talk about how the main political parties influence the German public broadcasters.

No surprise there is so little critical reporting, despite the 9 billion euros yearly budget.

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

#100

Post by usrusr »

maze-le wrote: post #81
usrusr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It happened in Frankfurt (Hessen), not Bavaria, you're probably referring to the Gustl Mollath case -- which is eerily similar. You're right its not a systemic issue I think (I hope), but it sheds light on the role of psychiatric "experts" in court proceedings and how corruptible they can be in some cases.

Oh, there was another one? That changes perspective quite a bit!
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