111–120 of 350 posts
> 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…
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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…
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I was thinking, that in a scary way, the psychiatric diagnosis for people investigating corruption in Russia or CCP does start to make sense. It is such an extreme risk to go against these regimes, both to their and their relatives' safety and livelihoods that it makes their actions seem insane. Extreme risk-taking without regard for consequence, suicidal tendencies, paranoia towards the government, unbounded anxiety…
BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this co…
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In order for any of that to happen you'd have to be convicted of a crime first. This would involve stripping immunity first, which doesn't happen all that often and involves approval from the parliament. Naturally, this is a partisan issue and members of the ruling parties would obviously vote against it, making it very difficult to achieve in practise. This is common practise in most democratic countries, though and…
But that still means that the OP was mostly right: these people are untouchable, so they can steal with impunity.
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 "untouchable" - because even politicians aren't and that's the point.
There's a difference between conflict of interests/unethical behaviour/incompetence and criminal actions.
The consequence of scandals like this should be a call for tighter laws, increased responsibility of all involved parties and better financial supervision in both politics and private enterprise.
Simply getting out the pitchforks, shouting that all politicians are corrupt criminals and demanding heads to roll doesn't change anything and isn't constructive.
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Even though losing the job is not a punishment, not everyone even lost his job. Andreas Sheuer is still in charge of transport as a federal Minister, despite the 500,000,000 € heavy corruption scandal. Von der Leyen got even "promoted" to EU-lead position after heavy corruption scandal last year when she was a Defense Minister of Germany. Not only Germany, but in the whole EU commission leadership it would be hard to…
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…
The answer to that question is called the CSU. But they are losing ground in Bavaria so there's hope.
> 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…
Maybe you can't bribe a policeman at a traffic stop in Germany. But in the levels above that, there are plenty of current egregious examples of corruption that has happened and was systematically covered up or ignored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking, that in a scary way, the psychiatric diagnosis for people investigating corruption in Russia or CCP does start to make sense. It is such an extreme risk to go against these regimes, both to their and their relatives' safety and livelihoods that it makes their actions seem insane. Extreme risk-taking without regard for consequence, suicidal tendencies, paranoia towards the government, unbounded anxiety…
BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this co…
Sadly can't read the article as I don't have a subscription but have followed this in the FT. Germany has an ultra-protectionist political culture for pet German companies. Wirecard was one such pet company but there are many others who have benefited from implicit state support in the form of lowered standards and private favouritism: Deutsche, VW, Siemens, etc. Wirecard even holds a banking license so should be sub…
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…