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

wsj.com

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

#231

Post by gridlockd »

sdinsn wrote: post #196
gridlockd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't prosecute "short selling", they prosecuted market manipulation: 1. Get a large short position 2. Publish damaging information 3. Profit It doesn't even matter if the information is true. If it is true, it is insider trading. If it isn't true, it is libel. Either warrants prosecution.

> If it is true, it is insider trading. No, it's only insider trading if the information is based on insider (AKA private) information. Anything that can be derived from public information, even with a stretch, is also considered public.

I could have made myself clearer, I am talking about "damaging insider information". Publishing already published information isn't exactly news.

In this case, the alleged accounting fraud mentioned in the FT article was insider information.

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

#232

Post by Traster »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #93
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.

This is the problem with short setlling - you don't need the company to be a fraud, you need it to be publicly outed as a fraud in a timeframe you can afford. This is what distinguishes 'The Big Short' and Bill Ackman with Herbalife. The mortgage crisis had a timeline for when the collapse would happen, that was the key. With Herbalife it was down to Ackman to convince the entire market that Herbalife wasn't a real business.

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

#233

Post by ncmncm »

goliatone wrote: post #226
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 always cringe when people use Germany as an example of a society that doesn't have a lot of corruption It is definitely interesting how perception works both inside and outside a given actor/nation. What I found illuminating was learning about the German bribery tax break[1][2]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-w... [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest...

Often when a country has a reputation for low rates of corruption, it is because corruption has been concentrated in fewer hands--wholesale, not retail--and the transactions are correspondingly larger.

In such places, retail-level corruption can be seen as competition with the market dominator, and crushed.

In the US, offering and accepting political bribery have both been officially decriminalized. The profit ratio of bribe to private benefit is typically well over 1000x.

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

#234

Post by ncmncm »

dathinab wrote: post #181
levosmetalo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is people are just not aware on the corruption in Germany because there's no "personal" and "everyday" corruption in a daily life. But if you look "up" the amount of corruption rise to the astonishing levels. Just remember Stuttgart 21 or the Berlin Airport, Hamburg Elb Philharmonic, Battleship Gorch Fock. Germany is full of such corrupt projects, it's obvious and everyone knows about it, but nobody yet wen…

> Berlin Airport Sadly (luckily?) this wasn't corruption but plain out retarded levels of incompetence...

Sustained gross incompetence is usually a mask for corruption. Without the corruption, normal corrective mechanisms that minimize products of incompetence elsewhere are allowed to operate.

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

#235

Post by SilasX »

ketzu wrote: post #199
pkaye wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the employees have requested a second opinion from another psychiatrist not connected to their employer?

According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required. But according to the wikipedia article, they later got more opinions when they got the conclusion overturned in court. (Including a famous psychiatrist whos assessment also helped overturn the Mollath case)

>According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required.

Yikes, the fact that such a life-changing diagnosis is not subject to a second set of eyes is disturbing.

(The later news is reassuring though.)

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

#236

Post by zepearl »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #142
levosmetalo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, Guttenberg and Von der Leyen are definitely on my "bad people"-list.

Guttenberg was even the main candidate to direct some sort of "Internet security/ethics" department (don't remember anymore exactly what it was)? What kind of joke is that?

Von der Leyen was involved in the story about spending a lot of $ for external contracting companies & other stuff, then she got "promoted" to the EU-level => another joke, for me.

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

#237

Post by dna_polymerase »

Traster wrote: post #232
camjohnson26 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the problem with short setlling - you don't need the company to be a fraud, you need it to be publicly outed as a fraud in a timeframe you can afford. This is what distinguishes 'The Big Short' and Bill Ackman with Herbalife. The mortgage crisis had a timeline for when the collapse would happen, that was the key. With Herbalife it was down to Ackman to convince the entire market that Herbalife wasn't a real b…

Herbalife still is a 'real' business. Ackman would like you to think otherwise but it still is. The whole thing might be a point against short sellers.

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

#238

Post by vonmoltke »

gridlockd wrote: post #219
fluffything wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely do not understand the word, because it is not limited to people, the word "insider" is limited to the information: is the information publicly available? If the answer is "no", then it is "inside" information, and trading on it is "insider trading". These short sellers were trading on publicly available information. They just gave this information more publicity after getting their short positions, whi…

> These short sellers were trading on publicly available information. We're talking about positions that were opened right before the FT article was published. The FT article included allegations by an insider, it wasn't only public information. Granted, there was also publicly available circumstantial evidence that things were fishy at Wirecard. Either way, these short sellers weren't convicted, that doesn't mean th…

The earliest article I can find from the FT that references insider allegations of fraud is https://www.ft.com/content/03a5e318-2479-11e9-8ce6-5db4543da..., which was published almost three years after the report referenced in the Yahoo article. What article was this supposedly timed with?

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

#239

Post by AndrewBissell »

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…

"Don't attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity."

This line isn't nearly as clever as everyone who quotes it thinks it is.

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

#240

Post by AndrewBissell »

jen20 wrote: post #162
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a point if one of the reliable features of privatisations in the UK over the last few decades hadn't been a steady stream of ministers pushing through privatisation - often at significant public cost - and then parachuting straight into the board of the privatised company. This is a bazillion times worse than cash in an envelope, because it's straightforward larceny of public resources, papered over wi…

> This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. The current government in the UK is uniquely poor compared to every UK government that has come before it. The situation there does not extend to "western nations" in general - just those run by incompetent/malignant (take your pick) populists.

The populists may have dispensed with the pretense of claiming not to be corrupt, but the corruption the parent describes was certainly there long before they came on the scene.
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