Skandal! La chute de Wirecard

There have been many documentaries & films over the past decade on the financial industry trying to give outsiders a glimpse into their usually mundane world, only to find that sometimes when they get it wrong it really is mammoth in proportions. In this case, we have a fascinating look into the world of now defunct German company Wirecard, which was pure criminal fraud right front of all our eyes, yet few even an eyelid, with there being either only some mavericks "shorting" them or a few genuine brave investigators. We have tales of politicians, financial gurus, outside investors, stock traders and one very brave FT newspaper journalist; all talking heads taking us through the machinations of this catastrophe.

What this doc does well is help to explain the ins & outs of the company, but also show the shere scale of the corruption underlying this company. Yet everyone was fawning over it, and clearly a blind eye was turned by everyone. It took some brave reporting despite the threats to reveal the truth.

However, I feel that this documentary is a little watered down. I guess for legal reasons there were more targets & names they could have attacked but didn't which is a shame, as at the end only a couple of names seem to be blamed when really there are plenty of more guilty parties involved. That lets it down but not enough to knock the film off the tracks.

As an introduction to the 'skandal' it's a fine start, but really I think something more meaty is required to forensically investigate all that took place. There may still be other "Wirecard" companies out there which we are all blind to!

All credit to Dan and the FT management for staying with a story even the German financial authorities tried to kill. Tenacious research and following of leads in Asia and Europe inspite of threats legal and otherwise reveals a real life financial scandal at one of Germanys largest companies. Fascinating insight into the world of short sells - not a very attractive bunch outside of two focuses American ladies who with others help lift the thick veil of secrecy of the fraudsters. Beats most financial dramas into small corner and makes you aware of the abilities of a determined fraudster to nearly make it even the German chancellor 'supported the company. Great insight into the talent and doggedness of a journalist never prepared to give up and of an editor prepared to take huge risks to get the story.

I must admit, I'd never heard of the collapse of the German multi-billion-euro tech company Wirecard even though it occurred only a few years ago, but having previously watched the movie "The Big Short" and more recently the TV documentary on the Stateside collapse of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, I couldn't resist watching this new Netflix documentary on a financial scandal which finally came to light in latter-day Germany.

I will admit that I found it at times difficult to follow the money, indeed I'll admit to checking beforehand the dictionary definition of short-selling before I even commenced viewing, but I hung in there until the part when the company's house of cards came crashing down quicker than you can say "domino", largely due to the persistence of "Financial Times" journalist Dan McCrum to expose the massive black hole at the heart of the company's finances. Its CEO, Markus Braun currently awaits trial in Germany, while his right-hand man and COO Jan Marsalek, a shady, shadowy figure with connections to the Libyan secret service and more particularly to the Russian authorities - he kept a private address directly opposite the Russian Consulate in Munich - conveniently disappeared on a flight to Minsk, no doubt en-route to Moscow, just as the proverbial you-know-what was hitting the fan.

It was amazing to see just how far the deception went up the ladder, with the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel promoting the company's services to the Chinese on a top-level diplomatic visit there and at one stage Wirecard proposing a takeover of the venerable Deutsche Bank to cloak its own internal improprieties. The F. T. journalists and their source contacts, a good number of them professional short-traders, talk at times of being in genuine fear for their own safety, with some being physically intimidated by sinister heavies and others believing they were being tailed by other spies in Wirecard's pay.

This film employed a, for me, questionable filming style to tell this murky tale, involving fictional recreations, often in comic-strip fashion, of certain key encounters, large outsize fonts to highlight place-names and even utilise an over-sensationalist title, all detracting somewhat from my assimilation of what, at least to this layman, was a sometimes difficult-to-follow narrative, especially with so many contributers pitching in with their two pfennigs worth.

Nevertheless, like the requisite German financial authorities in their investigation, I got there in the end and was appreciative to learn that financial fraud on a massive scale isn't solely restricted to the English-speaking countries.

Greed, corruption and deception it seems don't respect national boundaries, if they ever did in the first place.

I had read about the reports that Dan McCrum published in the FT concerning Wirecard's nefarious activities, but didn't know the intricate details apart from the fact that he was put under immense pressure to retract his accusations both by Wirecard themselves (using lawyers and spooks), and by the German financial authorities.

This excellent documentary shows just how far the German authorities went to protect Wirecard because it was a home grown FinTech success story which blinded them to the fact that it was committing fraud on a massive scale.

The information I didn't know was how Russia was involved and why the company was founded in the first place.

Absolutely amazing documentary which shows just how far Russia had infiltrated into the German financial system, and I can guess into the London financial system too.

Having watched the Wirecard: A Billion Euro Lie Sky documentary earlier this year, I was interested to see how this James Erskine Netflix piece deviated from the original.

I'm pleasantly surprised as it takes an entirely different viewpoint, focusing mostly on the journalists, short sellers and MPs, rather than the former doc covering the whistleblowers and other influential parties.

What ensues is an interesting value-add to the Wirecard story that helps to elevate the already thrilling saga of accounting fraud. The focus on Dan McCrum and team adds flavour to the narrative that was missing in the Billion Euro Lie doc. I do wish the whistleblowers were interviewed at the same extent however - though I imagine this may have been down to pre-existing agreements that would conflict.

Overall, well worth a watch, and I'll await the third instalment of this documentary battle, coming from Amazon Prime, where they finally get Jan Marsalek to show his face.