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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

levosmetalo wrote: post #71
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guttenberg tried to hold onto his position. He at first rejected the accusations, even though they had already been extremely well documented:

> Ich bin gerne bereit zu prüfen, ob bei über 1200 Fußnoten und 475 Seiten vereinzelt Fußnoten nicht oder nicht korrekt gesetzt sein sollten und würde dies bei einer Neuauflage berücksichtigen

> I am perfectly willing to check whether in any of the over 1200 footnotes and 475 pages individual footnotes were not - or not correctly - inserted, and to correct this in a new edition.

Guttenberg kept to this position for a week, while Angela Merkel and most of the government supported him.

In the end, though, the extensive plagiarism (93% of the pages have at least one known instance of plagiarism) in his dissertation was so well documented that it was impossible to deny, and his statements about possibly having made a few mistakes here and there also looked more and more like outright lies. Nobody plagiarizes to that extent by mistake.

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

#143

Post by s9w »

rasz wrote: post #128
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…

You are technically not wrong. I mean Hans-Georg Maassen, head of BfV (spy agency), did lose his job. Not after sharing secret information with neo nazis, that wasnt enough. He doubled down by calling fake news at a video showing neo nazis chasing/beating immigrants. Had to leave his BfV presidency ... for a higher paying position at the interior ministry ;-) aka promotion.

That is not what happened at all.

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

#144

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

DangerousPie wrote: post #130
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you're ignoring the part where the copper cable policy he pushed against the advice of his experts made the company he sold his share to obscenely rich. Is that also not corruption but incompetence?

I don’t see how you could call this corruption, he didn’t benefit from someone else getting rich. Unless there is any evidence that he sold his shares at an inflated price with the understanding that he would pay back the favour while in office or something like that, which I don’t think there is.

It doesn't matter who benefits from this deal, what matters is the country got shit infrastructure against the advice of his experts and the taxpayers paid for it.

Since he signed off on this, it's on him to be investigated.

That's what corruption is.

Of course, if you want, you can cover it up in red tape and make it look like incompetence.

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

#145

Post by hef19898 »

usrusr wrote: post #62
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…

My impression is that during the formative decades of West German power structures (let's say late Adenauer to early Kohl), the entire surrounding culture of media, regulators and of course politicians and business people themselves, failed to develop an awareness for corruption because everything was so nicely self-regulated by what basically boils down to modesty. In terms of anti-corruption measures it was like th…

Oh, the Kohl days have been corrupt enough. A lot as related scandals happened and started then. With the political changes after Kohl it just became harder to keep them covered up. Schreiber is name that came up often enough, and of course Franz-Josef Strauss, the Bavarian political king pin and capo of all Bavarian amigos. And a staunch right leaning conservative.

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

#146

Post by tsimionescu »

qayxc wrote: post #114
tsimionescu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't mean that these politicians are untouchable. If a politician is being caught stealing (e.g. embezzlement), criminal charges W I L L be put forward and immunity will be stripped from them. The problem here is that unethical behaviour and gross incompetence simply aren't criminal offences. Are they to be tolerated? No! But that's a question of changing laws and legislation accordingly, not one of being "unto…

Corruption is different from gross incompetence and unethical behavior.

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

#147

Post by legulere »

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…

They went after inside trading, as the release of the FT article seemed to be timed with the short sellers.

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

#148

Post by DangerousPie »

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…

Did you actually read the Wiki page? There is a lot of context you are leaving out there.

Based on my reading this was not some grand conspiracy by a bank to silence a critic. It sounds like this man certainly did have some psychological issues and assaulted his wife multiple times. Due to his history and his behaviour during the following court case he was locked up in psychiatric care.

He did make allegations about a tax evasion scheme during the court case about the assault (and these were wrongly seen by the court as a sign of his psychological problems). But it's not like he was a whistleblower who was silenced through some made-up allegations.

The Wiki page also says that the "reported money transfers were not illegal per se", so this isn't even a clear cut case of tax evasion.

Clearly a lot of things went wrong in this case and he was partially acquitted and compensated later on. But I don't think this is any evidence for systemic corruption in the entire country.

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

#149

Post by hef19898 »

Grollicus wrote: post #115
allendoerfer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why is he still in office The answer to that question is called the CSU. But they are losing ground in Bavaria so there's hope.

The day the CSU is not the majority party in Bavaria anymore is the day freezes over. Only to melt up again when the new government starts scratching the surface of 70 years of CSU governance, friction heat of doing will be significant.

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

#150

Post by hef19898 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #56
bluelu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing about Gutenberg is that he was also lobbying the german government in favor of Wirecard. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/karl-theodor-zu-g...

Not just that, Guttenberg was also a key figure in the "Augustus Intelligence" corruption scandal of Philipp Amthor.

Both, he is quite your guy for that. Kind of the lobbying equivalent of SoftBank, as soon as he's involved, probability of things being fishy increased significantly.
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