Wirecard employees removed millions in cash using shopping bags | Hacker News Reader

Wirecard employees removed millions in cash using shopping bags

ft.com

71 pointsdoener39 comments

For, uh, 'posterity': https://archive.is/AJljE

This really puts a dent in the reputation of Germany as a "low corruption" country. It does feel to me that there's been a lot more of this kind of stuff all over the west in the past decade compared to previous ones; I don't know whether that's 2008 fallout or whether it's just better reported thanks to the Internet.

Because we see no consequences when top politicians do it. So, it t trickles down.

One politic psychologist basically said (years back) corruption stinks from the fish head.

I think you may be looking for the expression “a fish rots from the head.”

It emerged that Bafin employees were allowed to invest their own pensions during the scenario with insider information. That's pretty shocking. It calls into question why they took legal action against the FT[1] instead of investigating the claims more thoroughly.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8e1948be-6060-11e9-b285-3acd5d435...

EDIT to add link: https://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/news/bafin-blames-em...

> It calls into question why they took legal action against the FT[1] instead of investigating the claims more thoroughly.

I could totally believe and expect this. Once was working at Berlin startup with German executive director. On some unfavourable reviews appearing on Glassdoor he started profiling employees and throwing Aufhebungsvertrags at them (if you read this come at me mate). He didn't attempt to address or even admit the problems. I paid for it with long months of mental burnout.

The corruption is low among general population and low-level government offices. High business is very corrupt. Moreover, Germany used to have laws that didn't punish corruption abroad, so they exported massive corruption to Eastern Europe. If you see Eastern Europe as being corrupt, it's because of the sums that arrived there from the West - basically creating a friendly mafia.

Having witnessed "privatisation" during the 90s and 00s in post-Communist Europe, I know what you mean. "Capital has no nationality", they were seriously saying and printing this all over.

Germany's behavior was listed in my globalization MBA course as an example of negative effects of globalization and why it is not perceived favorably in some countries, so I am curious how it looked from inside?

Eastern bloc became extremely corrupted under the Soviet rule, so Western capital which arrived here was met with much eagerness the accept the bribes...

In Germany the term corruption is not used by the media, it is "scandals" or "lobbying", although it is often crystal clear corruption. Don't forget the latest mask scandal.[1] And this is pursued only because the pressure of the public is so great, because it is incomprehensible that the authorities stuff their pockets while the majority abides by rules. There is no real punishment. In my opinion there is a lot of corruption in Germany disguised as lobbyism. There are superb initiatives like LobbyControl[2] who want to put stricter laws in place to publicize lobbying.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/german-politician-resigns-part...

[2]: https://www.lobbycontrol.de/

EDIT: Added lobbycontrol paragraph

And don't forget the "Berateraffäre", centered around the person that was then rewarded with a promotion to head of the European commission.

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-scandal-hanging-over-urs...

We'll see about Deutsche and Trump soon too!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/nyregion/trump-taxes-vanc...

Note that, while the article heavily implies that this was fraud, it doesn't actually say whether they were stealing or whether these were actual valid withdrawals of customers. The latter is pretty crazy, but it's not fraud (and I would guess that it's not that rare for banks to have customers withdraw large amounts in cash).

My understanding is they were an equivalent and competition of businesses like Neteller, Skrill, (Transfer)Wise, Paypal. Not sure how clients would directly withdraw cash from them? These could be valid "cash transfers" to various subsidaries avoiding banking system for whatever reason. BTW there was an interesting "cash fever" months before outbreak of COVID, even Deutsche Bank in Germany was putting in their ATM areas messages "for withdrawals exceeding 10k eur notice us in advance", hadn't seen them ever before.

Hmm, I know of people using them as a bank, but I've never used them personally, so I'm not terribly familiar.

This is what happens in an economy without culture of "the internet" when it feels an enormous pressure to succeed in the domain. Still biggest talents in Europe are forced to relocate there, pay ridiculous rents and be humiliated by landlords' castings. Hopeless waste of human capital. Germany might have low levels of perceived corruption but behind the scenes with their "elites"... whoa... one can literally hop from chancellor of the country into strategic Russian fossil monopoly and noone will blink an eye.

Valid point about the corruption imho.

It appears that corruption in Germany is mostly high-level corruption. It's super unlikely that a cop will say "I can make this speeding ticket go away if you donate to our fundraiser", and you won't see an average family speed up building permits by handing over stuffed envelopes, but the elite in industry and politics seems to be comfortably close.

Average folks speeding up will be caught by speeding camera and scrupulously fined by office clerks with amounts quickly reaching hundreds of euro and suspension of the license included. Individual permits will be similarly scrupulously evaluated.

For now. As mentioned above, it will trickle down. It's pretty embarrassing these days to be German tbh. Especially after what has happened in the last 12 months. Feels a lot like the country as a whole just gave itself up and stopped caring. Now people just decided to enjoy the decline as it doesn't really matter anymore. Especially since we're about to elect a party to govern is that will drastically increase state intervention. And we all know how that ends, I guess.

I can second that. Our politics has become a clown show. Traditional German values are not really upheld anymore. I don't want to sound like an old-timer here (I am not by any standards), but honesty, precision and quality seem to slowly fade away

but still, one of the big reasons for the weakness of the CDU is because of the "Maskenaffäre" (read: corruption), so in a way this IS a public intervention because of corruption. We might see how the Greens handle government but in regard to corruption they appear to be a better choice than CDU/CSU. btw I know that the SPD is an easy target (and they certainly are not completely innocent regarding wirecard) but still Scholz and his people are fighting for more openness regarding income of politicians (starting at 1 Euro income), so there are still rays of hope in Germany.

I honestly don't see the corruption potential with the greens, what I see is a great potential for the Greens to succumb to populism and incompetence outside of their core strengths.

The Berlin rent control was just a cover up rent for some stupid mistakes that were made in the past. It's basically a bribe to the public. Oh, we sold government owned housing to private investors? Here, have some forcibly lowered rent payments. Of course they rushed the bill and it was overturned.

If the greens can somehow figure out how to avoid falling into these self inflicted traps they would be strong enough to stand their own, as it is right now they still need some common sense beaten into them. My hope is that they do their big government investments, let the economy recover and then either become a boring government party or stay a quirky opposition party.

The brazenness of the fraudsters, the incompetence of the German regulators looking the other way, such a work of art chef kiss. Life is truly stranger than fiction.

Were the regulators merely incompetent or were they compromised?

Compromised by a looming high-salary job at Wirecard

Edit: downvoters should note this happens all the time, as in regulators getting high-level positions in their former ”client base”

Not sure why parent is getting downvoted, unless this really does not happen in Germany. Regulators getting jobs at the very companies they were supposed to regulate is common enough that it has a name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

I would not assume incompetence based on the regulators going after journalists instead of accepting help from them to do their job to find and prevent violations.

German quality is a myth, it's all about bullshitting and asserting things in such authority that most clueless managers (bullshit jobs, and 80% of them are clueless) would believe it

So crazy. Like that scene in Casino, just skimming the cash.

"The guys inside the counting room were all slipped in there to skim the joint dry. They'd do short counts, they'd lose fill slips. They'd even take cash right out of the drop boxes. And it was up to this guy right here, standin' in front of about two million dollars, to skim the cash off the top without anybody gettin' wise, the IRS or anybody."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN6mp2NjMhs

I can't wait until Bitcoin makes this kind of things easier. Carrying cash in plastic bags sounds such a boomer thing to do.

Even though taking out a few million dollars in cash is suspicious, withdrawing a few million dollars to a cryptocurrency exchange is even more suspicious.

how are you supposed to convert bitcoin to large amounts of cash? I have not found a way to do that.

A cryptocurrency exchange? I know of several that have withdraw limits in the hundreds of thousands per day if you're KYC verified (ie. passport scan + utility bill).

That's fine if you have a legitimate source of profit to demonstrate, not necessarily easy to explain source of funds otherwise

Its very German a few years ago there where a number of people caught with bundles of 500 euro notes going tax havens.

Bitcoin is not private and the chain is becoming monitored more and more closely. Every exchange leaves a permanent record. Probably monero will start to fill the gap if cash starts becoming too difficult

Guess I'll have to keep using OpenVPN for a while longer :/

WireCARD, not WireGUARD

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