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The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.
by the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.
- einrealist 6y agoWhat should I learn from this? That there are fraudulent companies? You make it sound like all Germans are responsible for this.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThat prosecuting journalists for reporting that a company is fraudulent should, at a minimum, be reserved for after it has been established that the company is not fraudulent.
- matzab 6y agoThe kneejerk insulted reactions to the original FT articles by BaFin and the German business press really haven't been up to par. They need to do a lot better.
- the_mitsuhiko 6y agoI hope at the very least this Beissreflex that every shortseller is evil and should be investigated gets curbed. Wirecard since 2008 was having the support of Bafin of going against journalists and shortsellers who were calling out the company for market manipulation. In Germany shortselling has an incredibly bad reputation. I think this is a problem.
- corty 6y agoThe lessons learned will be "hide your crimes better". And a few token gestures. This kind of crime is just too profitable, and the "little man" will not start any larger protests over it. So there is no desire anywhere in substantial changes.
- roenxi 6y agoBillions of dollars just turned out not to be there. I'm going to throw out a challenge to the idea that the "little man" was the loser here on the basis that little men do not have billions of dollars to lose. Someone bigger than little lost here. If every man, woman and child in Germany chipped in $1,000 that still isn't a billion dollars.
- siegfried-en 6y agoIt'd be around 80 billion dollars, actually
- pgrulich 6y agoI think he confused the us billion (10⁹) with the german billion (10¹²) ;)
- mratsim 6y agoWhat? So what do German use for 10^9, Milliarden? In French we use Milliard for billion and Trilliard for Trillions (and millions for millions).
- siegfried-en 6y agoYeah, that's probably it!
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this. N'ah! When it comes to big banks, big industry, big infra projects, German state institutions are super corrupt, it makes Wall Street and the City of London look like saints.
- benjaminva 6y agoSources?
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoWirecard, Dieselgate, BER Airport, German gov wireing the whole country with copper instead of fiber because the ministry of infrastructure had connections to the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine, all Gov IT projects going to SAP or T-Systems with no accountability, etc. Nobody went to jail for any of those and in some cases it was never investigated. If you're on the DAX, you're untouchable in Germany.
- Flockster 6y agoDo you have a source for the copper claim? That is entirely new to me.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agohttps://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere-handynetze-so-schlecht-sind-kolumne-a-1297362.html https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere... [Translated from German] Christian Schwarz-Schilling had been Post Minister under Helmut Kohl since 1982 and launched the German mobile phone network at the end of the 1980s. His political understanding of infrastructure can be seen in a disturbing fact: Until a few hours (!) before he was sworn in as Post Minister - Schwarz-Schilling was involved in a copper cable company. He sold his shares to Nixdorf. The company was then "one of the most important newcomers in the cable business". Contrary to most expert advice, Schwarz-Schilling pushed the extensive investment in copper cable instead of fibre optics during his term of office, in other words: politically, he acted entirely in the interests of the buyer of his shares. In any case, exactly 30 years ago, SPIEGEL called the mobile phone licensing for which Schwarz-Schilling was responsible "a festival of lobbyists". The fact that nobody got jailed for this obvious corruption is staggering to me and German politicians dare lecture Southern Europe on corruption.
- baxtr 6y agoI am really unsure if it's something "Germans" need to learn. It is probably something that could happen everywhere...
- smcl 6y agoOne weird thing I have noticed is that in the UK the phrase “The Germans” is often used instead of “Germany” (where it’s grammatically valid, of course) for some reason. It’s really noticeable if you watch British TV coverage of the World Cup or European Championships. Don’t know if the OP is British or living there, but it’s possible that this is what’s happening and they don’t mean “all Germans ...” and just mean “The appropriate body in Germany the country ...
- sgt101 6y agoI think UK English carries the intent that Germany is a physical place - an abstract legal notion. While The Germans are the people who live in this place. The place and notion can't really learn anything, while the people who live there could learn something.
- CydeWeys 6y agoVery common here in the US to do this with all countries. "Germany" is a country, whereas "Germans" are people. So in a sporting context saying something like "The Germans are better at passing the ball" makes more grammatical sense than "Germany is better at passing the ball". Same for the Italians, the French, etc.
- smcl 6y agoIt’s not quite the same actually. You’ll see the commentators occasionally reference Italy/The Italians or France/the French ... but the way they use “The Germans” is on a different level. I also feel like it’s also said with a weird intonation, so not “The Germans” but “The Germans” - with a little snarl :-D I don’t know how to explain it - you’d need to watch a World Cup with BBC and ITV coverage to see it in action. England have a special footballing history with Germany so it may be related to this. Note: not implying this was what the original person meant, this is just a silly tangent :-)
- StreamBright 6y agoWhat lessons exactly? Did they learn anything from the VW scandal?
- StreamBright 6y agoAnother aspect is that the financial auditor responsibility. I am not sure if the financial auditor criminally complicit but I think we are going to figure it out soon.
- yitchelle 6y agoThe Munich prosecutor's office, which is already investigating Braun on suspicion of manipulating Wirecard"s accounts, said "We will now look at all possible criminal offenses." The type of behavior that brought Wirecard down is not a German thing, it is a human thing. We have the ability to think outside the box for profit and greed, and that, sometimes, gets us into trouble.
- joyj2nd 6y agoYeah, like the Americans with Madoff? Who "did not run a hedge fund but provided services to hedge funds"? The SEC had also data provided from professionals that Madoff is either fraud or a ponzi and always ignored it. The sentence above was enough that they did not further investigate him.
- chewz 6y agoAny lessons learned from Dieselgate? Or from Danske Bank laundering 236 bilions Russian money? C'mon this is Europe... We are forgetting quickly here..