Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Ah, Wirecard, the company that's trying to get two Financial Times journalists prosecuted for exposing their fraudulent accounting:

https://aboutus.ft.com/en-gb/announcements/ft-statement-on-w...

View on HN

Well it's not so much the company trying to get them prosecuted, as it rather is Munich's district attorney that actually is investigating against them.

According to this article https://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/bafin-verdaechtigt-ft-j... there is an investigation in insider trading related to the Ft-article series (naked short selling allegedly rose before the publication of the articles)

Wait, naked short selling is unrelated to insider trading.

Insider trading is illegally profiting on information that was given to you in trust, while naked short selling is short selling without a documented ability to deliver the stock.

As far as I can gather from english language articles, the regulator has banned short selling in response to an article alleging fraud at wirecard. Bloomberg describes this as "unprecedented".

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-18/bafin-ban...

today's FT front page headline 'Wirecard relied on three opaque partners for almost all its profit' 'Dubai-based unit of German payments group was not audited'

'Al Alam Solutions, a Dubai-based payments processor with skeletal operations in the Emirate, is the largest of the three “partner” entities. Wirecard refers clients to Al Alam in return for a share of any processing fees as commission. A former Al Alam employee said the business had six or seven staff in total and “the boss” was Oliver Bellenhaus, a Wirecard executive. The other partners are PayEasy Solutions, a Philippine payments group that shares an office with a Manila bus company, and Singapore-based Senjo. '

https://www.ft.com/content/a7b43142-6675-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a...

there was more short selling activity in advance of the articles which is now the reason for the investigations (and for the ban of short selling)

Whilst naked short selling can be an offence, in this case the insider trading is the of the short selling before the news came out. The fact its naked happens to be irrelevant to the insider trading case.

I think the German definition of insider trading is more loose and could potentially include someone profiting from spreading fake news.

Why is the regulator acting like the attack dog for Wirecard rather than investigating allegations of fraud on Wirecard’s part?

Wirecard was investigated, and as far as I remember the press coverage, there were irregularities, but no real fraud.

Why are HN commenters on the top of this submission somehow claim there's big misconduct, even some conspiracy?

As a German unicorn, Wirecard seems to be enjoying a certain national handicap which is absent from the British paper’s digging.

A Munich prosecutor threatened investigation into FT and Wirecard was happy to double up on threatening journalists, yet nothing seems to be actually happening. This strengthens the impression that Wirecard is locally protected.

Wirecard has pretty much zero mindshare in Germany. Almost nobody has ever heard of it, the only reason why a few people have heard of it is that they are one of the Apple Pay partners.

I really doubt there is much local protection. Wirecard is no VW.

German regulators are known to be on the stricter side compared to other EU countries and Banks/Financials aren't really popular in Germany anyway. So I doubt that this plays any role in the investigation.

But so far, the FT allegations didn't prove anything and coordinated short selling ahead of the release of the articles appears suspicious. On the other hand, the FT doesn't back down so there should be some merit to their stories.

Wirecard will present an external audit report these days about the allegations that Softbank will probably already have seen. The news about the investment probably indicates that the report isn't too bad for Wirecard.

So.... why is a German financial regulator probing a British newspaper? That seems extremely fishy, if FT was wrong then Wirecard should have brought a civil suit for defamation.

Because the alleged financial misconduct by the journalists affected a German company? Seems regular to me.

Potential market manipulation happened primarily on German stock exchanges, there's no reason anyone else but German regulators would investigate here. If you manipulate US stocks it's also the SEC that investigates, not the regulator in the home country of the trader (they might be involved though).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com