I remember reading about the Wirecard scandal when it happened, and the key learning wasn't that it was some very complex financial scam that no one could have seen coming (quite the opposite in fact), but rather that the entire state machinery – politicians, regulators, intelligence agencies, banks – was complicit in the fraud because they wanted to take credit for a German company making its name among the silicon valley elites.
A passage from the article:
> On February 18, 2019, Germany’s financial regulator, known as BaFin, issued a ban on creating new short bets against Wirecard, citing the company’s “importance for the economy.”
> The same day, prosecutors in Munich confirmed to a German newspaper that they had opened a criminal investigation. But they weren’t going after Wirecard—they were going after the F.T.
A passage from the article:
> On February 18, 2019, Germany’s financial regulator, known as BaFin, issued a ban on creating new short bets against Wirecard, citing the company’s “importance for the economy.”
> The same day, prosecutors in Munich confirmed to a German newspaper that they had opened a criminal investigation. But they weren’t going after Wirecard—they were going after the F.T.