Germany’s SEC Dismissed a Decade of Warnings About Wirecard

I’d previously read about BaFin investigating FT journalists but have never seen a comprehensive list of all of the times their protections of Wirecard. This jumped out at me:

> An early chance to look into Wirecard came in 2008, when an association of small shareholders filed a suit with a Munich court targeting Wirecard’s accounting practices. It alleged Wirecard counted customer deposits as its own cash and that its margins were suspiciously high.

> BaFin opened a probe into the accusers. Wirecard had complained after the suit caused its stock to slump. Two former officials of the staid association were charged, convicted of market manipulation and handed suspended prison sentences.

I’m struggling to see a non-corrupt explanation to this pattern of behavior.