I have a real hard time with this idea that the Wirecard TPA network was real, and produced genuine turnover and profits that were stolen
(The broad strokes of Braun’s defence is that he is a victim of the long running fraud by the company he ran.)

https://twitter.com/SkyMartiner/status/1705213843813916859

Lots of people looked for it and the money, and came up empty.
Why didn’t Braun ever try to spend it?
Where are the records of the millions of transactions that would have been involved, the daily bank transfers, the hundreds of staff, the chargebacks?

Today's the day! Our movie is out on Netflix!
#wirecardskandal
Let me know what you think "Being a journalist, you get to do all sorts of things you're not supposed to..."

This is very cool, premiere tonight! Skandal!

MONEY MEN is out today!
The thrilling true story of Wirecard’s wild rise and crashing fall charts an investigation like no other. It reveals hidden worlds of short sellers and whistleblowers, pornographers and private militias, hackers and spies. 🧵1/6
amazon.co.uk/House-Wirecard… It starts with a handshake in the LA office of Hustler’s Larry Flint. Everyone involved keeps doubling down until an encounter with “the dark lord of the internet” sets Wirecard on a path to fantastical riches and inevitable destruction. 2/6
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

It’s a sunny afternoon, who wants to talk about people who have inspired you through the example they set?

I’ll go first, let me tell you a little about David McCrum, my dad.

🧵 Dave, as he's known to his friends, sold cars to embassies for Ford. He has some terrific stories about befriending diplomats with blinding amounts of gin, but that's not the example I'm thinking of, I wasn't around yet.

The #cryptocrash reminds me a little bit of the day Wirecard announced €1.9bn of its money was "missing".
(June 18, 2020, two years ago this week)
🧵 All the investors, long and short, knew a day of reckoning was coming. Publishing audited results could be put off no more. The big unknown was if EY would be duped, again, and sign the accounts for the tenth year in a row.

🚨Competition time 🚨
To mark publication of MONEY MEN, the stranger than fiction thriller about Wirecard's multi-billion dollar fraud, I have 2 proof copies to give away.
To enter: predict the $ price of Tether at 10pm BST today. $0.9977 now
Closest wins one.
Reply to win! Thank you for playing. The 10pm Tether price hit 0.9986.

Well done @Edmund_Schuster @RabbiJacob16 @benyeohben @beingianbergin @Postbote1970 @preiselbernd @BenFoldy @BenFoldy @Simon_Craven

If you could all bring a knife to the Strand Underpass, we'll proceed to sudden death*

For background on Wirecard collapse today, these are the two key stories.
In October, we wrote that sales and profits appeared fraudulently inflated.
ft.com/content/19c6be…
In December, we wrote that "trustee accounts" were included in cash balances.
ft.com/content/845b0d… The rise and fall of Wirecard
with the indefatigable @OlafStorbeck
ft.com/content/149cd2…

New Wirecard story today poses what should be a simple question to answer: why did the German company agree to pay around €300m for an Indian business only weeks after it changed hands for €37m? (Free to read) 1/6 ft.com/content/b36723… It explains why Wirecard’s largest takeover has raised questions of fraud, not least because the two key Indian businesses it purchased are under investigation by the Singapore authorities in connection to suspected forged documents and fake sales.
2/6

The latest FT investigation into Wirecard features some brilliant on the ground reporting from @stef_palma, who visited its listed partners in Manila, found a bus company, empty warehouse, lot of confused people. ft.com/content/cd1239… Those partners shine a light on the business Wirecard refers to internally as "third party referring", expected to contribute half of sales in 2018. A quarter of revenues were forecast to come from "acquiring", according to information from whistleblowers.