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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

#281

Post by amiga_500 »

oblio wrote: post #214
gumby wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is notable for its lack of “retail” or low level corruption (cops don’t take bribes, you can get a building permit by following the rules, etc). One of the best in the world. But at the highest levels the opposite prevails, up there with France or even the US. Not Kleptocracy by any means, but bad by OECD standards. Because it’s so institutionalized it doesn’t really appear in those “corruption index” reports…

I'm from Romania. You don't know how good you have it. The low level corruption is the thing that eats away at your soul and poisons your day to day life. High level corruption? Awful, but we have that too. But having to bribe the nurse so that your grandma gets painkillers (or toilet paper!) in the hospital? Having to bribe the police officer to get your driver's license? Having to bribe the lady at the counter work…

They have it so good because they complain about stuff that is trivial relative to countries like Romania. It's a constant battle and to be satisfied is to give up.

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

#282

Post by jevgeni »

mech422 wrote: post #280
maest wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you are underestimating the negative drag low level corruption has on the economy. It means setting up businesses or conducting any commercial activity is slow and fraught with hidden costs and risks. Information isn't usually freely available and solving problems usually involes "knowing someone" and going through backchannels.

oh? sounds like trying to figure out why FAANG closed your developer account :-P

Do FAANGs burn down your office and break your legs?

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

#283

Post by rurban »

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...

I would not blame incompetence. Same things happen in SW projects all the time. It was wrong planning and organization.

The client was constantly allowed to adjust plans.

I've worked as architect on similar sized projects. You can't allow clients and esp. committees to change direction at all. This a breach of contract. With hospitals, universities, concert halls and airports you need to be strict to the local government, which is the client in such cases. They are no experts, they change every 4 years, they exhibit irrational behavior sitting in a committee.

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

#284

Post by rurban »

kensai wrote: post #202
pkaye wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I happen to work for the psychiatric services of a rich German state. A second independent opinion is always requested from the judiciary.

Opinion yes, but the second assessment ("Gutachten") will not examine the accused personally, only the paperwork. In all cases psychiatric assessors will trust their colleagues more than written defenses or observations. Only if the first assessment is internally severely flawed it can be overruled. In most cases the first assessment just ignores any contradicting evidence, so the independent assessors had no chance to find out any contradictions or flaws. It simply is not in the papertrail.

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

#285

Post by ehvatum »

UnbugMe wrote: post #120
awakeasleep wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates with me as an american. I dont think there is any amount of money i could offer to safely escape a drunk driving ticket, however the ceo of my company was the head of the board for an security company, and we were forced to use their products despite an unimaginable amount of flaws. The second the security company was sold we were allowed to drop every aspect of that company, 10 huge enterprise product…

Thats not in any sense corruption.

It is in the sense of gross conflict of interest, very obviously. The board should have canned him, but I'm guessing they are all old friends...

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

#286

Post by marton78 »

freeflight wrote: post #261
peroporque wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even worse, von der Leyen got promoted to be head of the EU. I mean, wtf!

That's been a rather old joke among Germans: Politicians we don't like we just promote to the EU parliament to get rid of them.

Hast du einen Opa, schick ihn nach Europa!

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

#287

Post by wirespot »

levosmetalo wrote: post #69
arcturus17 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Spanish yet having lived in Germany for quite some time, I agree with you... I'm not saying there's no corruption in Germany - I think there's always going to be some level corruption at a certain scale of state - but there's no need to go as far as China or Russia for comparison. Just come to the South of Europe for a taste of what grand-scale corruption in what are otherwise (seemingly) high-functioning democ…

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…

Power corrupts.

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

#288

Post by bostik »

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…

> looks so good in the corruption statistics

The main corruption measurement I know of is the CPI: Corruption Perception Index. It doesn't measure how much corruption there is in any given country, it only measures how much visible corruption there is. I'm sure there are other gauges but that's the one that gets reported and made comparisons on.

For a long time Finland tended to be either the top dog on that list, or at least hold firmly its hold in the top-3. As a Finn, I always found that rather depressing, for a simple reason. The top spot on the CPI list tells nothing about how well things are in a country. It merely tells how shitty they are even for the runner-up.

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

#289

Post by creato »

awakeasleep wrote: post #85
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…

This resonates with me as an american. I dont think there is any amount of money i could offer to safely escape a drunk driving ticket, however the ceo of my company was the head of the board for an security company, and we were forced to use their products despite an unimaginable amount of flaws. The second the security company was sold we were allowed to drop every aspect of that company, 10 huge enterprise product…

I think this example is why the appearance of a conflict of interest should be the standard for navigating ethical concerns.

If a guy owns a company, I don't doubt that he believes it's the best at what they do. The one thing most CEOs I've met have in common is they ridiculously overestimate how great their companies are. This guy probably genuinely believed his security company was the best choice. It's "not invented here" on the scale of companies instead of git repos.

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

#290

Post by creato »

qayxc wrote: post #276
tsimionescu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption is different from gross incompetence and unethical behavior.

You're still missing the point completely - corruption is a crime . The problem is that pretty much nothing these politicians do is actually illegal and thus doesn't constitute a crime in the first place. This is why legislation and regulations need to change, because that's way easier than trying to change people. If you don't like the rules of the game, demand to change the rules instead of shouting "You're all che…

I generally agree with your point, but I disagree that legislation and regulations are the problem. Once you reach high level politics, the fact is that anything but utterly blatant criminal behavior will be a political issue.

The solution is that politicians need to be held to a much higher standard than the letter of the law, by their voters. It boggles my mind how many politicians have such obvious conflicts of interest that manage to retain approval of their constituents.

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