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They seem to completely miss the story about Imtech's involvement that broke this week which sheds some lights on this catastrophe and is a tale of corruption:

They seem to completely miss the story about Imtech's involvement that broke this week which sheds some lights on this catastrophe and is a tale of corruption: http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzoegerung/komplettansicht http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzo... Unfortunately I'm unable to find an English-language article on that at all. There is only this Imtech response: http://imtech.com/EN/corporate/Newsroom/Highlights/Imtech-response-to-media-attention-on-16-July-2015-about-legacy-issues.html http://imtech.com/EN/corporate/Newsroom/Highlights/Imtech-re...

giarc 11y ago
Can you provide an English summary?
- germanier 11y ago
  I try but don't hold me accountable for any inaccuracies. At the moment three public prosecutors independently investigate that companies practices which is rare in Germany: 1) A gigantic adventure park in Poland which was never supposed to be built 2) A cartel which allowed them to build two power plants 3) Falsification of balance sheets. Imtech is responsible for parts of the airport's construction – including the two parts which created most problems: the smoke extractor and the cabling. As the airport was close to be finished, opening date just days away, Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects. Similar things happened a few years earlier: When the planning agency went bankrupt and it was known that due to regulatory changes the plans needed to be fixed they nonetheless went on to built the (now obsolete) parts – knowing they will be the company that will be called to fix it again. Additionally the work was done sloppily: Among the quoted examples were control boxes build too close together that you couldn't open their doors. What was really important for the company was that all invoices should be paid by the end of 2012 to include them in that years balance sheet – while delaying paying their workers until January. As time was running out they resorted to a bribe: In December 2012 an employee of Imtech gave an employee of the Berlin airport an envelope with 150 000 € at the side of the highway. Airport employees spend overtime during the christmas holidays so that all payments of 65 Mio. € could be processed. The article then goes on the describe the involvement of top management which indicate that this is done systematically. They also describe the two other projects from above. They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    "Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects." Yeah, this is a bit too typical and happens in the USA also. If you ever have to deal with building something, check every invoice as if it was from Snidely Whiplash.
    - germanier 11y ago
      The article specially mentions a one-page invoice with items like "overhead costs" and "disturbances while building" amounting to millions – billed at a time where they still had 5000 other invoices to check.
      - protomyth 11y ago
        That would be the time to try to slip something through. Also, its not like the accounting department knowns what the invoices mean. This is why a lot of places require work orders / purchase orders to match each invoice. No WO or PO #, no pay invoice.
  - brazzy 11y ago
    > They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects. This seems to me to be the most interesting finding: the company was not doing all this illegal shit in a diabolical scheme to make the owners or management super rich (though they probably got some fat unwarranted bonuses over the years), but in desperate attempts to stave off bankruptcy. A bit like Nick Leeson's Barings Bank shenanigans, just with less leverage, so it took a whole company to do half the damage a single person could do in finance...
    - tinco 11y ago
      One of the managers got fired for incompetence, then sued and won over a million euro for being fired without good reason. Yes, they got a little fat off of it..
- stingraycharles 11y ago
  Google translate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzoegerung/komplettansicht https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...
  - germanier 11y ago
    I'm surprised that the quality isn't too bad. Sure, the grammar is way off but you can actually understand what they are trying to say.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      I find how well that works is directly related to how closely related English is to the language in question. The further you get from its Germanic and Latin roots, the proportionally less sense a rough translation makes. Some of that is figures of speech, some of it is colloquialisms, some of it is just weird grammar. For example, Japanese tends to omit the subject, which is incredibly confusing when directly translated if you aren't expecting it.
      - gerbal 11y ago
        Germany newspapers apparently use weird grammar conventions that makes translation engines have fits. Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. The translation of the above article is pretty good because a number of people have looked at it and made corrections, but the average German Newspaper article translation is nearly incomprehensible.
        dvdkhlng 11y ago
        > Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. AFAIK Google translate is trained by using corpora of documents that have known-good translations. I could imagine that they are trained using EU documents, as these would usually be available in multiple languages. That would explain why performance on stuff published by the EU is so good...
wahsd 11y ago
Holy crap, that Zeit article is horribly written.

giarc 11y ago

Can you provide an English summary?

germanier 11y ago
I try but don't hold me accountable for any inaccuracies. At the moment three public prosecutors independently investigate that companies practices which is rare in Germany: 1) A gigantic adventure park in Poland which was never supposed to be built 2) A cartel which allowed them to build two power plants 3) Falsification of balance sheets. Imtech is responsible for parts of the airport's construction – including the two parts which created most problems: the smoke extractor and the cabling. As the airport was close to be finished, opening date just days away, Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects. Similar things happened a few years earlier: When the planning agency went bankrupt and it was known that due to regulatory changes the plans needed to be fixed they nonetheless went on to built the (now obsolete) parts – knowing they will be the company that will be called to fix it again. Additionally the work was done sloppily: Among the quoted examples were control boxes build too close together that you couldn't open their doors. What was really important for the company was that all invoices should be paid by the end of 2012 to include them in that years balance sheet – while delaying paying their workers until January. As time was running out they resorted to a bribe: In December 2012 an employee of Imtech gave an employee of the Berlin airport an envelope with 150 000 € at the side of the highway. Airport employees spend overtime during the christmas holidays so that all payments of 65 Mio. € could be processed. The article then goes on the describe the involvement of top management which indicate that this is done systematically. They also describe the two other projects from above. They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects.
- protomyth 11y ago
  "Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects." Yeah, this is a bit too typical and happens in the USA also. If you ever have to deal with building something, check every invoice as if it was from Snidely Whiplash.
  - germanier 11y ago
    The article specially mentions a one-page invoice with items like "overhead costs" and "disturbances while building" amounting to millions – billed at a time where they still had 5000 other invoices to check.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      That would be the time to try to slip something through. Also, its not like the accounting department knowns what the invoices mean. This is why a lot of places require work orders / purchase orders to match each invoice. No WO or PO #, no pay invoice.
- brazzy 11y ago
  > They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects. This seems to me to be the most interesting finding: the company was not doing all this illegal shit in a diabolical scheme to make the owners or management super rich (though they probably got some fat unwarranted bonuses over the years), but in desperate attempts to stave off bankruptcy. A bit like Nick Leeson's Barings Bank shenanigans, just with less leverage, so it took a whole company to do half the damage a single person could do in finance...
  - tinco 11y ago
    One of the managers got fired for incompetence, then sued and won over a million euro for being fired without good reason. Yes, they got a little fat off of it..
stingraycharles 11y ago
Google translate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzoegerung/komplettansicht https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...
- germanier 11y ago
  I'm surprised that the quality isn't too bad. Sure, the grammar is way off but you can actually understand what they are trying to say.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    I find how well that works is directly related to how closely related English is to the language in question. The further you get from its Germanic and Latin roots, the proportionally less sense a rough translation makes. Some of that is figures of speech, some of it is colloquialisms, some of it is just weird grammar. For example, Japanese tends to omit the subject, which is incredibly confusing when directly translated if you aren't expecting it.
    - gerbal 11y ago
      Germany newspapers apparently use weird grammar conventions that makes translation engines have fits. Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. The translation of the above article is pretty good because a number of people have looked at it and made corrections, but the average German Newspaper article translation is nearly incomprehensible.
      - dvdkhlng 11y ago
        > Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. AFAIK Google translate is trained by using corpora of documents that have known-good translations. I could imagine that they are trained using EU documents, as these would usually be available in multiple languages. That would explain why performance on stuff published by the EU is so good...

wahsd 11y ago

Holy crap, that Zeit article is horribly written.