It seems extremely organised and well-protected for alleged fraud.
Usually fraud relies on personal/corporate reputation. But when you have both lawyers and hackers being employed to take down critics and investigators, it's reasonable to ask questions about regulator collusion and political influence.
The problem was that German politicians were extremely desperate for at least one large-scale German "new tech business" success story, and Wirecard seemed to be the only candidate that on the face of it appeared to fit the bill. That blinded them to the obvious and made them see an anglo-saxon conspiracy to keep German tech down behind every reasonable story about Wirecard.
In my opinion, it shows the dangers when national protectionism and picking winners intrudes in the supposedly neutral business of regulating critical businesses.
Short sellers and investigative reporters are natural contrarians. There just aren't many people willing to invest years into proving that everybody else is wrong, especially when the victory -- if you get one at all -- will be pyrrhic.
When you make claims that are outside the overton window of the listener they can't hear what you're saying because to them you sound unhinged. I think that's what happened here.
I don't think that term applies to short sellers or investigative reporters. When they win, they profit. John Carreyrou's career and reputation have surely seen a boost from his work on Theranos, no?
It's interesting thing to realize, short sellers might be good control for the market.
> In summary, the $WDI fraud has all the features of today’s highly evolved art of corporate financial fraud. Its scale, duration, and brazenness (faked cash!) highlight just how free a hand financial fraudsters enjoy to ply their trade.
> It also exposes just how deep the rot is in the realms of regulation, accounting, securities exchanges, and (with important exceptions) almost all of the financial and business media.
> BaFin – their reputation as a financial regulator lies in tatters. The entire leadership of the organization should resign immediately. Merkel should launch a sweeping investigation.
> Taken as a whole, the ‘circling of the wagons’ by the German regulatory, business and media establishment around a long running and obvious fraud casts a large shadow on the integrity of the German economy.
> A fraud this big and blatant can only persist for this long with the assistance, either active or passive, from a wide range of enablers. They all need to be named, shamed and suffer the consequences of their complicity for the good of the financial markets.
We have a bunch of oversight organs that don’t do much overseeing and opt for overlooking instead :/