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>The crazy part here is that EY did not verify directly with the banks if the account statements were real, which is very basic and very easy to audit. They jus

>The crazy part here is that EY did not verify directly with the banks if the account statements were real, which is very basic and very easy to audit. They just took what Wirecard gave them to confirm what Wirecard told them for something as important as accounts that were supposed to hold almost all the cash the company had. Absolutely insane. Not insane at all, and you went on to explain why it's not insane: >But the thing is EY , like all the big 4, have totally seperate entities for every country they operate in. Now that could mean EY Germany is an isolated case of incompetence and (criminal?) neglect People believe that these firms are strict in auditing, which can be useful to some companies to have as a seal of approval. Case in point, Deloitte and the reverse mergers of Chinese companies with an estimated loss of $500 billions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_21st-century_Chinese_reverse_mergers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_21st-century_Chinese_rev...

mardifoufs 6y ago
But even for the "regular" scandals this is pretty ridiculous, which is the insane part. Usually there's at least plausible deniability or some sort of excuse. In this case they literally have not done the most straightforward thing in auditing and then signed that they did... For years. They are exposing themselves to criminal charges at this point. There's a difference between "accidentally" missing something/blaming hidden processes in the accounting and literally just not doing it and then legally signing off to it. There was a wild west in the early 2000s with sino forest et al, but since it was in china and the government was gaining from those fraudulent schemes, they had almost no risks to actually get punished and that's the difference. There was also the excuse that it was new, half licensed agencies in a new market. Rule of law makes it much more dangerous to do it so blatantly in germany It's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old kickbacks.
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  >It's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old kickbacks. It could be, though whenever I get interested in a case like that after the facts, it ends up in a version of someone in a company noticing something is fishy, and someone else pulling rank on them telling them to back down not to upset a very lucrative client. Just be quiet because I'm getting calls from the fishy company's boss threatening to take their business to another firm. Don't be rude, we're making a good buck with them. It's also their model of independent entities sharing a name, with varying degrees of scrutiny and diligence. It's interesting how incentive structure and checks have to be dialed in the bigger, more distributed an actor gets.

mardifoufs 6y ago

But even for the "regular" scandals this is pretty ridiculous, which is the insane part. Usually there's at least plausible deniability or some sort of excuse. In this case they literally have not done the most straightforward thing in auditing and then signed that they did... For years. They are exposing themselves to criminal charges at this point. There's a difference between "accidentally" missing something/blaming hidden processes in the accounting and literally just not doing it and then legally signing off to it. There was a wild west in the early 2000s with sino forest et al, but since it was in china and the government was gaining from those fraudulent schemes, they had almost no risks to actually get punished and that's the difference. There was also the excuse that it was new, half licensed agencies in a new market. Rule of law makes it much more dangerous to do it so blatantly in germany It's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old kickbacks.

Jugurtha 6y ago
>It's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old kickbacks. It could be, though whenever I get interested in a case like that after the facts, it ends up in a version of someone in a company noticing something is fishy, and someone else pulling rank on them telling them to back down not to upset a very lucrative client. Just be quiet because I'm getting calls from the fishy company's boss threatening to take their business to another firm. Don't be rude, we're making a good buck with them. It's also their model of independent entities sharing a name, with varying degrees of scrutiny and diligence. It's interesting how incentive structure and checks have to be dialed in the bigger, more distributed an actor gets.