341–350 of 350 posts
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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...
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Sustained gross incompetence is the norm when it comes to megaprojects like Berlin Airport. Late and very over budget is the norm for projects originally budgeted to cost over $1 billion. You don’t need bribes or backhanders.
I think this amount of money should imply certain existential risk: if you have that power then you are inherently liable. It’s like Putin - you could call him a democratic asshole, but you would never call him incompetent in politics - because if he was, he wouldn’t be alive by now.
Is this an idiom wherewith I'm unfamiliar?
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Problem is, you wouldn't find anyone willing to take that job then. We're all just human after all and making mistakes is part of the human condition.
I think it’s a comfortable lie people say. There’s so much that comes with the power that it’s a very shallow argument to make.
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Mollath wasn’t killed: he was falsely imprisoned and received EUR 670k compensation for that. Mölleman‘s death was suicide (the accomplished parachuter jumped out of a plane less than half an hour after his parliamentary immunity was revoked, opened the main chute, cut it, and didn’t open the reserve, (and the automatic reserve deployment was disabled)). Seriously, it’s not Russia.
> Mollath wasn’t killed: he was falsely imprisoned He wasn't imprisoned, they sent him to the asylum for 8 years because claiming German banks could do criminal things is just such crazy of a thing to do. Which has quite some similarities to what happened to Hessian tax investigators [0] that were too successful for their own good: Using psychiatric assessments to discredit people who blow the whistle on corruption.…
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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…
Is there a "usual fee" for your driving license?
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It's been this way for a while (forever?) in the US... Dick Cheney helped start a war (that killed something like 500,000 people) on knowingly false pretenses partly so that he could give his company Halliburton a $7 billion dollar no-bid contract.
That's pretty standard corruption. But the Bush administration, as rotten as it was, would at least provide schools with resources to open. Right now that's not happening. Why? Because there is no money in it. You can't get a kickback from a school, you can't get a lobbying gig, you can't get a board seat. There is nothing to gain.
> That's pretty standard corruption. But the Bush administration, as rotten as it was, would at least provide schools with resources to open.
By what measure is killing half a million people, standard corruption?
(and you didn't really mean to say that's okay when they would at least provide schools with resources to open ... did you?)
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It used to be that way. Right now in the United States, the level of corruption that we see is absolutely off the charts and out in the open. It's akin to a strange alien weapon for most Americans, that goes off near you, putting you in a state of trance, and you don't even know what's happening. There is brazenness and blatancy to it, as in "yeah, I did it, what are YOU going to do about it?" In many other countries…
No, it's not that bad in America. The corruption we see in DE is similar to that of US and even Canada - and it's of a different kinds. It's not corruption in the classical sense, it actually is rational for the state to prefer copper, if the state has investments in copper - in a kind of perverse way. Less rational and borderline corruption if an individual state actor has personal investments in copper. 'Big Busine…
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FTC and VDSL Copper from the CAB to the Home is not a "Bad" decision. For quite a while early on in the internets history we are talking 1990's the German Telcos still wanted to use IDSN
Germany did quite a lot of ISDN over fibre to the home in the 1990s, most of the recabling in the east after reunufication was done that way. However, they made the mistake of burying active components along with the fibre strands that only spoke ISDN. And of course no tubes. For upgrades they ripped it out again and built copper when DSL was en vogue... If they hadn't fucked up this badly, probably due to corruption…
The UK could have had much better fibre if back in the 90's Mrs Thatcher's government had given BT a 20 year payback and allowed BT to implement its Fibre plans.
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IIUC, EY was paid to check that what was reported in the books balances to zero. They were not paid to check that what was reported in the books was "correct". That's not EYs job. If somebody thinks a company lies in their books, they report it to BaFIN, and it is BaFIN job to investigate. They did the opposite of that here though.
It absolutely is the auditor's job to check that what is reported is "correct". The auditor's task is to check that the company's financial statements give a "true and fair" view of the company’s business. Auditors are expected to confirm e.g. that inventory counts are correct and inventory valuation is reasonable, that accounts receivable represent actual claims on counterparties that actually exist, that bank accou…
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IIUC, EY was paid to check that what was reported in the books balances to zero. They were not paid to check that what was reported in the books was "correct". That's not EYs job. If somebody thinks a company lies in their books, they report it to BaFIN, and it is BaFIN job to investigate. They did the opposite of that here though.
Okay, if this is true, you are saying they are making billions by running a simple algorithm? Why do they exist?
So it definitely makes sense to require multiple accountants to check the books of these companies _for mistakes_.
Also, running the simple algorithm is the last step of the job. When somebody gives you their books and transaction data, you need to convert that to a format you can first process, which is 99% of the work. Books, receipts, etc. come in dozens of different formats. Running the algorithm is 1% of the job.
E&G is required to check that, if there is a receipt from an external company that gave Wirecard 2 billion, and another receipt of Wirecard sending those 2 billion to a bank in the Philippines, that those are properly noted in the books and everything balances out properly.
They are required to assume that Wirecard is working in "Good faith", and this is not a German thing: everything else is just impracticable.
Even if you were to throw an infinite amount of money and time at the problem to verify that all transactions actually happened as reported, if all sides of the transaction are in on the scam (the company that gave wirecard 2 billion, wirecard, and the bank that stores them), then there is no way for E&Y to find out.
If they are aware of criminal activity, they must report it, and maybe E&Y did not wanted to be aware of that, but who knows, maybe Wirecard was just good at scamming, or E&Y was aware of that and reported it to the German SEC. We do know that a lot of people did report Wirecard to the German SEC over the last 10 years due to suspicions of criminal activity, and the German SEC, which is the only authority that can investigate Wirecard properly, did nothing about that.