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

Post by C1sc0cat » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #19

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…

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).

Post by kensai » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

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…

Post by marcinzm » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

lima wrote: post #170

marcinzm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Corruption, or (gross) incompetence? Don't attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity. Misplaced trust, broken culture, political pressure, or ev…

Post by holoduke » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

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…

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

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…