Courage & Decency: The Story Behind a Story (Gabriela Sperl & Pav Gill)

thank you so much for having us here um steffi is always bringing together everyone from everywhere and this is also where i met marcus brown at dld and i was also impressed by this german fintech company digital the future so everyone i didn't really understand

what it was all about but it was very impressive and then all of a sudden a newspaper started to write german newspapers were still hailing the company the financial times was saying that their crooks and that there were things going on behind the scenes

and when i read these articles i was wondering what's going on here is it the rivalry between two countries what is it and then all of a sudden this wonderful company crashed and then being a filmmaker i went to my friends at sky and at ard and

i walked in the door and there were people there julia she was executive producer and uh yes yeah it's it's true you walked in the door into the door with an incredible idea with an incredible energy and as often is the thing uh with these things um sometimes you know someone's failure or someone else's success and and we got lucky because you created a beautiful film and um it was just so that at sky we were looking at launching our own original

documentary channel and this was our first original documentary which we're very proud of thanks to gabriela and she always came in with a very different point of view so rather than focusing on what exactly had happened and who was responsible here in germany we always were incredibly interested in who was who was behind it all bringing them down who were the critics and you shown a spotlight on it thank you very much and since we're sort of only a small

audience here i also want to mention benji and jonah bachmann the one is in tel aviv the other is in vienna those were the directors the young directors of this film who can't be here today and i want to mention who was executive producer with me and we were literally fighting for nine months to get this show done and covet

in a covert situation so we would like to show you just an introduction so how how is this possible how was this possible i think looking back to it a year after that they crashed and a year after the pandemic started i think it is very important that we all concentrate on a shift in mindsets

that there is a paradigm shift that post-pandemic i think none of us can go back to pre-pandemic times i think there has to be a new normal for all of us personally business-wise and as a society and this is also what what stephie just said it's very important that we look at these things from a different angle

um i think the new normal is for me personally i think it's a process of healing it's a process of of concentrating on decency on fairness on gender equality on participation and on ethics in business and i think if we're talking about ethics in

business we all need role models and role models play a very important role and we need we need gatekeepers to let these role models come in and this is where i come to the main protagonist of our film and that is pavkgill who unfortunately can't be here today because he's in

bangkok and their travel restrictions and quarantine and everything so so i'm glad path at least to see you virtually we've gotten so used to it but i find it very nice to see people to see an audience to actually be here with other people so pav hello from us here and we're happy to welcome you hi hi gabriella hi everyone

hi hi pav um path you were so proud to work for a german company uh you were the eyes and ears for wirecard as a senior legal counsel where you were the eisen ears on the grounds in asia to protect wirecard's interests and suddenly the world cracked what happened

i think that's a question we're all still trying to figure out what exactly happened and why did it happen i mean like what you said it was supposed to be a german company you know the german branding is very uh well known for doing things the right way as the leader of the eu some you know some would argue and uh it's it's just got a reputation of you know having colleagues who are ethical who operate based on trust

um and and you know no one would have expected um a listed german company was 24 billion euros uh to have been a criminal enterprise it took everyone by shock and it it's shaken me myself as you know my family my friends everybody and i'm pretty sure the german republic as well as to what happened here

so so how did you find out things were going wrong within two to three weeks of joining the company things didn't really make sense i mean you have people who are hired such as ido cornea and whose cv didn't add up but yet he was given you know total control of finances spanning from south america all the way to new zealand uh and this guy didn't have at least on the surface of it the the relevant

experience and you know everyone was afraid of him um but yet on the other hand structurally things didn't add up like why if the company is worth so much money does it have to always back headquarters for even a simple thing such as wages every month something doesn't really you know make any sense and and my job was to protect the company um as the senior legal counsel the sole one in munich i mean in singapore in asia

actually uh looking after 11 markets um i wanted to find out what was happening you know why are things the way it is are they integration issues uh cultural issues uh or you know what's going on and eventually you know things added up and an internal whistleblower came to me uh in confidence as the movie would get into detail with and that's where we realize that you know it's not integration issues it's not cultural

issues it is a full-blown fraud that's happening and you your first idea was that you turned to munich you turned to asham to tell them that something really bad was going on in asia because you still thought that germany would fix it yes uh yep that's right so you know right away like within minutes of ending the meeting with with the whistleblower uh who came to me

i was on a phone call with munich legal and telling them guys this is what's happened i think you know we need to fix this my initial thought was is it just a few bad apples in the company like uh you know particularly ido the finance team or just some other bad actors and i genuinely thought that uh reporting this right away to munich would set us on the right path to uh you know fixing those issues so then you found out

that munich took over the investigation and for you it was then clear that the culprits were sitting in ashram yes it was very disappointing because you know a lot of the evidence that we came across was purely objective in the sense that you had people transferring monies from corporate bank accounts uh to their personal bank accounts you had emails from themselves with logos of fake uh you know third-party companies

we had no legitimate interest with and those same logos were being used to create invoices for example that looked exactly like the wirecard invoices monies were moving uh you wouldn't pay 500 000 euros for a malaysian market intelligence report in malaysia for example uh and a lot of these things left back or fingers were pointing towards instructions from you know higher-ups in the munich all the way to the board so when the board

took over the when the board eventually found out they wanted to you know take over the investigation from my understanding marcus braun was very unhappy that his time was being wasted on 30 40 million euro issues and and jan marselag was upset he said asia is my my own crown i created this place why did i not know what's going on uh let's find a way to to shut this down and he wanted to take over the investigation

and we were upset and you know emails were sent saying you can't have people who are persons of interest investigate themselves uh and that's where you know things went downhill pretty quickly uh at least on a personal and professional front so you were told to shut up and go on with what you were doing and to look away but instead

you had the courage to go on you had your mother helping you which i think was was very important for you and uh we interviewed her and she's a wonderful person so i think she she's also a great believer in decency uh so she was a great help to you um but where did you take the courage to to just

go just go on with it i think courage has always been something that's been innate uh you know my mom's a single parent uh we grew up in very challenging ways and a sense of justice and wanting to do right was always instilled at least in me as a person who was pretty much tired of seeing wrongdoing happening tired of seeing trust being abused all the time and

you know the way wirecard behaved towards me uh during the last few months as well as after i left the company and then seeing what you know health impact it had on my mom as well uh i decided that okay enough is enough and we need to really expose this uh criminal enterprise they they threatened to kill you by telling you to go to

jakarta and what kept you from going there well my mom pretty much said that she's going to keep the passport and i'm not going to find it but i think there were also two calls from munich anonymously telling me that they understand i'm trying to go to i'm being sent on a business trip to jakarta and they strongly advise that i do not go because in you know and also ido ido was back having gone underground for a

while in the us during the investigation phase and he was back and he was you know constantly reminding everybody as to how he's married to a drug dealing family in jakarta and uh you know saying that wirecard has been and i quote like he said wirecut has been known to make people troublemakers disappear and he also said but you have nothing to worry about right and you know in the kind of way where it is definitely an implied threat and

when you see a business trip with no legitimate purpose being set up and people telling you that you have to go even if it's next week two weeks later or two months later and on top of that you're getting uh tip-ups from munich that's that's when you know that you know all rules of fairness all rules of ethics right you know just the whole management process has failed and these guys will not stop in wanting to get rid of you because you

are the last man standing so that was that was very very um very challenging for you to just keep on doing the things you were doing um what do you think i mean it was not not just only a fraudulent criminal enterprise wirecard i mean there had been warnings from many people going on since 2010 which we know now

for well over ten years people had been reporting people had been filing the munching stats and well shafts and telling them to do something against wildcard why do you think that neither the regulators nor the auditors i mean they were paid by a card so you can say they didn't want to look so they didn't look but why did why did the prosecutors and why didn't the regulators look i mean we're in

germany so so one would expect that these institutions would be working this is i think the most shocking aspect of everything if you watch the movie uh you would see how so many attempts were made and what in the end happened was the people trying to expose the company ended up being the ones being investigated and if you are in a situation where you are up against not

just a 24 billion euro giant but also against institutions who for who all at least you know prima facie appeared to be protecting these companies this company then you know that this is a battle that is just not your usual exposing of a a standard fraudulent company i have no idea why munich prosecutors didn't react they were given the same dossier as uh the ft were given but it's just sad and just even now

reflecting on it it was the journalists that ended up doing their jobs it was the journalists that ended up doing the jobs not just of the prosecutors but of baffin um of whoever else is meant to be looking at these things and why that has happened i have no idea but i hope that the parliamentary inquiry or or the the many good people that remain in power can figure it out and put an end to it yes that's what we all hope also for the sake of germany that people

can look at germany and not say germany has become a country where these things can happen like dieselgate happened and other things happen here they happen everywhere but as you said you are proud to work for a german company because allegedly they are decent and totally different so do you think it's also to do with national and international that you have national regulators and international companies do you think that

helps people to do these kind of things more easily no i think it really boils down as to wanting to do the right thing and that's just the moral compass at the end of the day it is not something that's restricted to individuals or employees it is something that's which you know also expanded towards regulators uh governments and enforcement agencies i do not think any excuse can be proffered in this case it was a

failure on multiple grounds and just just going back to your point i do not feel that this wirecard incident should reflect permanently like a stain on on the german republic because you know there are many many good hard-working honest individuals there and and wirecart should not you know tarnish that reputation so i still have full confidence and you know in in instances like that

where problems happen where agencies have failed where you know laws have failed this is usually the way for a country or jurisdiction to say that okay this has happened but it will never happen again and this is why so i think the whole world at least in in where i am are waiting to see whether you know finally uh the right thing would be done and whether it would repeat again

yes we i think we're all looking forward to this and hoping for this and uh thanks to to the press thanks to uh people like us who are allowed to make films about it and thanks to whistleblowers these things can hopefully and ultimately be resolved whistleblowers have been attacked over the last years and some whiffle blowers are really sort of been kept in prison like

huge criminals i think whistleblowers have a huge moral um moral task what what are the tools that as a whistleblower you can you can use to and to to go forward i think the only main tool uh you know other than you know things like courage and and wanting to do the right thing the one

power that whistleblowers have is the truth if you have the truth it's objective then you know people always ask me do you live in fear do you not fear that you have now come out and my response nowadays is that if you have the truth then why are you the one living in fear it should be the people who are committing those crimes who have committed those crimes or you know continue to do so that should be living in fear they they need to be wondering

whether the next day uh enforcement agencies are going to come knocking down you know their doors they are in their homes or raiding the company so if you have truth you have that courage and you have the determination to want to do the right thing then it's it's a decision you have to make for yourself so what what advice would you give to people that that are in a similar situation as you

have been the advice i can give is listen to yourself you know weigh the situation uh do you really want to go down this path because once you do there's no turning back from it uh but yes if you have a very strong moral compass if you have a company that has gone out of its way to try to destroy you and and people that you know

then you should just do the right thing thank you so much puff you're a wonderful role model for all of us julian absolutely um thank you so much pav i don't know if you can tell me yes uh it was wonderful to work with you and you are one of our modern you know true heroes and uh very happy that you um that you're part of our little family now thank you yes thanks so much and thank you dld for having us

thank you you