Webinar recording: Fireside chat with Wirecard whistleblower

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okay so then let's start um dear everybody on behalf of the entire Dunham Bradstreet Europe team and our GTM leading third-party risk and compliance Christian calendar I would like to warmly welcome you to our second day of the 2021 version of the compliance knowledge power days the power they spent an entire week and focus on important topics of compliance you would gain insights into why we at Donna Bradstreet believe that Master data compliance is a true love story how

you can streamline your compliance processes with the right tools and how you can ensure to stay updated about your ultimate beneficial owners tomorrow we'll elaborate on and look into the supply and chain act an ESG and learn how our precious customer arrival is in fact the bank runs the kyc processes we do this over lunch as part of our lunch connection where you can grab a free voucher and enjoy a delicious meal while learning on Thursday and Friday our experts will

shed practical light on existing and upcoming regulatory requirements as well as outline a sound and automated third-party risk management approach so if you haven't registered yet don't hesitate to join the virtual sessions you won't regret it for sure however in a highly regulated and compliant world people try to stretch boundaries sometimes people go even further embark on a non-compliant journey but it is not the regulations

nor the laws that stop them it's Brave and selfless people uncovering and revealing non-compliant activities and sometimes that has a detrimental effect on their own lives in fact sometimes they even risk their own lives or their families lives today I'm extremely honored to introduce a person who is one of those Brave and selfless individuals who truly wrote history pav Gill here's the Whistleblower in the biggest fraud case

in Germany to date and was a turning point in the breakdown of wirecard a very warm welcome to you path we are extremely glad to have you thanks Patrick good to be here great okay so before path captivates us with his exciting story I would like to point out a few logistical things we're going to record the session for those who cannot participate and we're shared recordings with you after the sessions

as well we have put you on mute if you have any questions during the session or when we come to the question and answers part then please write them into the Epic fmqs there is a FNA button within your Zoom window at the bottom we'll take care about the questions and raise them on your behalf the chat has been disabled due to privacy okay so let's jump into it path why cause breakdown is certainly the biggest

fraud Scandal that Germany has ever seen can you please bring our audience up to speed what happened when you joined wirecard in 2017 and about your role sure so a lot of things happen uh during that one year that I was at wirecard my role was to be the first legal uh person on the ground in the Asia region so I was covering um 11 markets in the Asia Pacific region which wirecard was operating in at that

time and I was given the instructions to be the eyes and ears on the ground for particularly the Munich HQ legal team as well so you know during the course of the one year that significant events took place which uh you know involved for example things that didn't make sense internal whistleblowers coming to me as so legal counsel in the region and saying that

look they're being forced to carry out transactions which are illegal or which they feel would jeopardize them as well as their safety so you know I did take these people into confidence and eventually launched an internal investigation into what was going on and that was shut down um as soon as the board found out and you know I was the last man standing forced out of the company and after that

yeah we know what happened I guess I guess we are all aware about the story and I guess that was it's not even exciting times I would say I mean that was that was really also kind of a life-threatening um situation but I mean let's jump back to the to the startings when you started off at wirecard and people approach you about the irregularities I mean what were your initial thoughts when you kind of uncovered that something is something

is going on here foreign well um you know very early on upon joining the company things just didn't make sense to me anyway uh a lot of things didn't add up for example you had the CFO type figure called Edo who was way in experience based on his CV but yet he was controlling finances all the way from South America to New Zealand practically the whole globe and uh he was directly reporting to the board the

board itself and no one actually wanted to cross this guy so you know simple thing like getting wages for every employee in the Asia Pacific region uh Edo was the one that had to go to Munich to you know get that money which was very surprising for a company that was going to be tax listed and then became Dex listed on on the German Stock Exchange because we're talking about a company which is valued more than Deutsche Bank and Commerce Bank combined and yet they're having difficulties

paying wages uh of employees in each of the subsidiaries and on top of that you if you looked at you know the financial statements of each of the subsidiaries in in Asia Pacific you would see that none of them were actually profit making a lot of them were actually loss making so when financials like quarterly financials or interim Financial results came out and these these figures were nearly the same in terms of ebitda profits uh and and to the Europe region

um not so you could understand why and where this money was coming from so obviously you know as as a legal and compliance person this things just didn't make sense and suspicions were raised from Mayan and another colleague of mine um and that front you know we we got the confidence of some of the finance staff in the company who were operating under this this Edo person and eventually I convinced one of them to tell me uh what was going on and that triggered off a

whole series of events okay so apparently Edo played kind of a pivotal role in the entire Scandal and um you know from from from my research I've heard that a lot of people were kind of afraid of Edo and could you point out why that was the case well he was a powerful person because he was hired by uh at that time the CFO or carte lay

um and also he he had the year of Jan marcellac who now is you know the most one of the most Wanted men in Europe and on the Run uh the CEO at the time of wirecard and a lot of the fellow I mean the the executive buys presidents in the region none of them wanted to cross Edo because they all used to say that he's a very powerful person and if we offend him our budgets would be taking a hit so it's best to keep this guy on our

positive side and what was also strange from a corporate governance perspective is all the EVPs along with uh you know the CEO type figures they all reported to Jan marsalek so what was strange is if you looked at Edo CV and his background at the time he was about in his early 30s maybe 30 to 32 years old and none of the experience levels actually added up to what wirecard was giving him in terms of responsibility you would expect like as

a journalistic company as a very multi-billion dollar market cap Enterprise that you would hire someone who's more experienced and has that kind of know-how I mean we're talking about a person who couldn't even put an email meaningfully together when he wrote it so the question was raised like what was it that the board members saw and you know that uh made them trust him so much in order to pretty much run finances from right

across the map okay so it it looks like that apart from that he played a huge role in the entire Scandal you are pointing out that his qualification would not have matched up to the role that he should have played do you believe that when he was hired and he was already hired in hindsight that you know he he should coordinate manage a couple of things that might not been from a compliance perspective

okay-ish I mean the way he ran the finance department was also questionable in the first place so what he had he had a strategy which is he would hire a lot of inexperienced staff and then he would suddenly promote them and and if you're talking about Singapore which was the Apec HQ um what where Edo was you know subsequently transferred to what year would do would be higher Malaysian and Indonesian staff so give them an employment pass in Singapore and then he

would give them a high salary and promote them to levels uh like head of accounting or head office and head of that which they were actually not experienced to carry out so what that meant is they had to rely on his expertise and his instructions because if you were one of these employees the way you are looking at your scenario is as follows I've now got an employment pass in Singapore I've got a good job with a journalistic company on top of that

I've got a good title so if I'm inexperienced I'll rely on my boss and I don't want to you know offend anybody because where else would I get this opportunity so to me that was a form of abuse in a way because he was actually hiring and promoting people who are inexperienced and who reliedfully on to carry these dubious which the finance department was doing okay so when you started your research and

you also got I guess you know in touch and stumbled upon either or how was that for you you know what kind of relationship did you have to either I had a very good relationship with him I mean he was one of the first few people that I was told to get close to um simply because he was that influential in the company uh so we did we we became very amiable we we had several business trips together in the region we went to different subsidiaries uh he actually kind of gained my trust

as well in in a way like he didn't think that I was one of those people that you know would would turn against him and or was suspicious of him because generally at the time I was actually trying to figure out why what the dynamic was and you know what was actually going on in the region because if you were in wirecut at that time as a new employee what was being drilled into your head was that wire car is practically a startup and APAC it just expanded so

quickly there are integration issues uh you know in every country in Southeast Asia for example it's so different to one another and yet you have them trying to sync with a very German European style organization so these things take time sometimes years and you know they're a teething problems so this is what was drilled into your head uh and then and for me it was really trying to understand like was that the case or was something more going on

when talking about you know is there more going on um when you when you started looking into it and start realizing that it could be something bigger um what kind of moment was that for you when did you realize it and what did he do with you well it that's when the senior Finance person who one of them that he hired came to me and told me that you know

she's afraid of her life because she was hired by Ido in his number two who's also Indonesian uh like Edo and the kind of things that she's being made to do in terms of a finance role was clearly not right um but yet you know she didn't know how to proceed because you can't exactly tell your boss that you don't want to do this uh without offense I mean people are still kind of sensitive to offending

you know commands from superiors in this part of the world at least sometimes you may question yourself and I think this is one of the big problems with whistleblowing in general I think a lot of employees do not necessarily know they may suspect that they're being told that what they're doing is wrong but yet they would constantly convince themselves that they're either overthinking it or they shouldn't rock the boat or they they shouldn't jeopardize what is the status quo right but the some of the events which this

employee was being told to do was just flat out wrong like round tripping for example and you know that person didn't know who to speak to other than me because HR human resource department was also very questionable everybody knew that the HR department was actually the uh the Spy of the management if you can put it that way so because this person joined about the same time as I did I think she found you know there could be

a trust and confidence place in me and I wouldn't necessarily throw under the bus so a lot of the stuff that she actually gave to me on paper in terms of hard evidence that was just clear like one of the invoices for example was a 2 million euro payment in Malaysia for a market intelligence report in Malaysia and this is by a company which has no business really it's just a shell company and the way the payments are structured the invoice looked exactly like wire

cards invoice format and they were split into four payments of 500 000 Euros and one of the most basic things that anyone in this part of the world knows is that in Malaysia you do not invoice in euros and also I think it would be quite something for anyone to see what a 2 million euro Market intelligence report looks like from an unknown company so we're talking about these kinds of very obvious uh questionable activities was it the first time for you path when

the person approached you and just told you that you know she's she's afraid of that something's going to happen to her um was not the first time that someone in your professional career approached you when you kind of felt that maybe this turns out into something like whistle blowing and and how was that for you how did you cope with it I mean if it's if it was the first time I was something new for you as well

I think it's the first time that someone has actually come with hot evidence and genuine fears uh which couldn't be ignored and which also tallied with my own suspicions so there have been obviously many I mean no company is 100 clean right and we always have things which are great especially in the fin case uh where like for me now I'm in the crypto space so every day you have something which may not have a clear regulation or guideline on

um but I think in this particular situation it was very very obvious that what the company or what Edo was doing at that time was just flat out illegal or just wrong um and what is very scary as well when you're talking about this guy is that he used to go around telling everyone that he's married to a drug dealing family in Jakarta so naturally as a legal and compliance lead if you're talking about a payments

company and a person who's involved potentially indirectly maybe in a drug scenario but yet it is covering South America to New Zealand in terms of finances and controlling everything then these are very questionable reflex like what kind of basic due diligence checks has the company done why were they approved and what's going on right so there's just so many questions in your head and when an employee comes to you with evidence that's pretty much

irrefutable on at least at that moment um you need to do something about it which is you need to investigate further so you did that basically so you were investigating even further then the board found also out um that you're doing this and something is is not adding up and how did the board react on that well the board was very upset so from what I heard from The General

Counsel who got involved very late in the stage uh general counsel Andrea Gores so I didn't know that she didn't she wasn't aware or made aware of this investigation that was taking place simply because he was being coordinated by a number two which is the Deputy general counsel so I was reporting to him taking instructions from him we were engaging the law firm in Singapore to look at mirrored inboxes of Edo and his two uh senior Finance members uh one of

whom was the head of Finance for the Asia Pacific region so we looked at the inboxes we found like just so many things which for example is number two just emailing himself logos of a lot of these companies which we had no uh business no legitimate business dealings with and no reason to have any dealings with right so any normal company would immediately having seen these things at least as spend these employees spending further

investigation outcomes but none of these things happened in fact the board was very upset you had Jan Marshall like who was very angry saying uh Asia is his baby and his region how come he was never made aware you had Marcus Brown who as of today is still feigning uh complete ignorance and portraying himself as a victim as a CEO saying that you know this thing is wasting his time because it's only 25 million euros and 30 million euros um and then you had the other two board

members who just were ambivalent to the whole thing so they what they then decided to do at least yanmar's leg and Marcus Brown decided to do was to shut down the investigation or but then again you know they couldn't really shut it down instantly so what was very creative from their part was to say look let this Law Firm just continue and let's use this as a gap analysis which basically means let's find out where our gaps are if someone

looks at our company and then try to cement them right and one of the questions I see in the chat is was a whistleblowing Channel created yes and this was part of the next steps which the company did which is extremely frightening is they actually rolled out a whistleblowing program um which was said to be anonymous but it real in effect it actually went straight to janmar's leg and the ball so they used the whistleblowing channel internally as a way to find out like who

else knew what and um they could then finally deal with people okay so that must be a strange um that you went through also and that the employees for sure as well so when the board found out and they freaked kind of out they they wanted to stop the investigations or you know um as you pointed it out they did it in a in a in a different way

um communicated that in a different way but what what did it do to you did they change their behavior the company the management everyone who was aware of the investigations did did they change their behavior towards here oh yeah for sure like very quickly so the same uh bosses in Munich who were extremely gung-ho and wanting to do the right thing suddenly started to backtrack and slink away um and in in the local office in

Singapore where I was based you had the local CEO type figure they're constantly coming into the office and intimidating you know closing the door raising his voice there were also some uh some kind of like fake HR investigations which were undertaken against me uh just to add on to the pressure for example so you feel like you're in a very isolated situation um but what was keeping me going was that the law firm continued to say that

this is just a Race Against Time now and the more we are uncovering as a law firm would be just so clear-cut that uh these people just have to go so just hang in there and and just withstand these these firestorms that are going on right so that's why I was just staying put and at the same time it's very difficult because you have 11 markets to cover so you still need to put all these uh pressures aside

and focus on your work because what you don't want to do is then give someone a reason that you're not performing or an objective work related reason to get rid of you and how was that for you I could imagine that performing under such a pressure people people are not nice to you and how was that for you personally path well I think I mean it wasn't a good situation but I I'm one of those I I guess it's like

you know one of those stubborn people uh who who knows like he's a dog with a bone right so once you know that you're on the right track or then it becomes a challenge because this is what you hired to do this is the whole point of being a legal and compliance professional right why should you be resigning or why should you be coming to any kind of these uh intimidatory or you know just plain nonsense behavior from the company of course it's difficult it's easier said than done but at the end of the day

the focus is really on wanting to do your job so as it was just trying to constantly get busy with the work um it was extremely challenging one of the key things which I think many people don't realize is that when you're in this situation you feel extremely isolated because you can't speak about it to anyone you can't talk to your friends about it you can't even talk to your colleagues about it simply because you have confidentiality and other professional obligations involved right so you know that's where the isolation

kicks in and of course you can't you also second guess yourself like why are you in this situation for having tried to do the right thing is this actually the right thing should you just cave and let everyone know you you're just not interested anymore um so you flip through a whole spectrum of emotions but I think what keeps you grounded is that moral compass and that ethical Compass plus the professional one which is you need to do your job at

the end of the day and as long as you're doing it and if you're going to be then fired for doing it then so be it okay so and then you have to leave the company were you kind of surprised how they managed the view out of the company yeah so that was when I think all Rules of Engagement if you want to put it that way in this scenario were out of the window because

what having failed in all various tactics and strategies which they were coming up with in order to get me to leave the company uh they decided to take the extreme route which is to create a business trip to Jakarta which didn't exist in in in a bona fide way they kept insisting that I go there uh to attend a meeting which didn't make any sense and they also said that even if I go in two weeks time in two days

time or in two months time that's okay as long as I decide that I will go and you know when someone says these kind of weird stuff you naturally have your red flags everywhere in your head my mom found out and she was like this you know Jakarta where Edo is from and they are forcing you to go there with no legitimate business reason then you know this I'm not gonna let you go I'm going to keep a passport right uh what was the most concerning aspect of

it was that I received two phone calls from Munich and I still don't know like who these people are uh saying that look I've understand you're being told to go on business trip to Jakarta we would strongly advise that you don't do it because it's you want that uh the minute going and that was on Thursday I remember uh on a Friday I received an email from the local CEO guy on the ground there uh and he said look I want to see you in my

office on Tuesday and I already knew that that's it they are going to use this as a reason uh to terminate or force me out of the company and again this is one of the very weird situations that a person is in right because if a company is using a business trip to get rid of you and you know that but you don't want to go on the business trip because of that then technically they could just turn around and say that you're not doing a job right you're refusing to be a professional they're not carrying out instructions so they will use this to get rid of you uh and

that's actually what happened on that Tuesday they tried to make use of this situation uh the CEO guy on that Tuesday said look I've been trying to get you to play ball for all these months you refuse to you thought you could run to your legal team in Munich but you know everything they listen to everything I say and blah blah so we wanted to go okay wouldn't have it been easier for a wire card you know kind of bribe you or you know rather than threatening your life

yeah that's what I still kind of don't understand I mean the word indirect attempts at doing that like saying look what would it take uh for you to just forget about it um what it's one I mean I couldn't put myself in that position obviously because once you do that then there's no turning back from it it's a paper trail um as attractive as it might be uh but they I mean they didn't emphasize on that for very long they were trying more aggressive ways and once I decided that

I was going to leave the company that's where it made even less sense because the agreement was that they would be supportive in me finding another job in fact they weren't they renaked on that agreement and they went out of their way even after I left the company to make sure that I didn't find gainful employment or that I was constantly being discredited in the market so I think that is the part which I didn't understand because if someone's left the company then you should just

let them go and let them move on but wirecard didn't they kept keeping tabs and it's not if anyone watched the sky documentary it's not just on me it's also on a few others you know anyone that's viewed in the uh that's termed in the uh in their mindset as a troublemaker uh they would not let that person carry on you know not let the person move on so in a weird way as I've said in quite a few talks now it's really like dealing with bullies right like they would

criminal organizations and I guess criminals in general they're all like bullies in the sense that they'll keep trying to carry out their misdeeds until one day they meet like the wrong counterparty that just brings it all to an end uh and I think in varicat's case that's what's happened okay so in my introduction I pointed out that it's very often the the Brave and the selfless people you do uncover these kind of things but it was not just you

also your mother played a huge role in the entire breakdown of wire cards can you can you point out what your mother did oh yeah my mom um I I mean just some background my mom's a single parent and I'm the only child from from the get-go so naturally she's been overly protective and I think until now she still is um this gives me a few headaches every now and then uh as a 38 year old guy

with white hair so you know my mom was very taken aback by the whole Jakarta attempt and even as a solebred winner of the family uh she found very even you know they tried to get rid they don't work and now they job right and so I think at some point it just hit her internally and she decided that okay if this is how the how it's going to be

then something needs to be done about it and I have no idea how from her so far she got in touch with Claire Rio Castle Brown who's Gordon Brown sister-in-law and also the journalist that exposed one MDB in Malaysia the biggest Scandal that she got in touch with Claire Brown Claire gave her some advice saying that uh the story is very big and she knows that the financial times has been covering this uh for the last five years and they would be best place to deal

with this so my mom just came to me while I was looking for a job every day saying look I've got an appointment made with the Ft um let's speak to them and to me was it was more like what have you done uh why what's the point of it but she the way she phrased it was more like look let's just speak to the Ft you know they're not a scoop paper they're very professional outfit let's just see maybe we don't give them everything first but let's just understand how certain outfits like like that would protect

their sources would protect whistleblowers and whether there's anything to this whole thing right because both of us could just be overthinking it because the Ft could just turn around and say look based on everything it's shown us and given us like I think this is just overblown like forget about it so that's that's what actually kick-started that meeting with the ft so when you spoke then to the FTE right after that nothing happened well there was a the first meeting was

with Stefania Palmer the cook Singapore correspondent so Dan macrame actually asked her to meet us in the airport and just to see like what information was present and what this whole thing was about because I think Dan at the time was also pretty uh sensitive about the whole wire car thing because he was writing Alphaville for a few years and getting completely destroyed on Twitter by by the wirecard armies that so he was just quite apprehensive whether this is one just another trap but when Stefania

saw like the material that was there I think it was so irrefutable that within three days from that meeting Dan was in Singapore and we had another three days going through the material the problem was I mean I wouldn't say it's a problem but the difficulty was like it took four months for the ft to finally publish the first article uh and that only happened when we kind of like threatened them Claire and Rick Castle actually threatened the Ft saying look there's been four months you guys are sitting on it every time you say You're Gonna publish it's you you change

your mind there's so many false deadlines so if you're not going to publish it then we will just move to a paper that will uh and that triggered the first article to be released on January 31st so yeah like I think or 31st uh 20 20 2019 was it 2020 last year yeah 2020. so when the other article came out how did you feel it was great because uh finally the

things are out in the open uh the company would now be distracted with having to deal with a legitimate expose this time and for the first time with hard evidence from someone from within uh I mean you're talking about mirrored inboxes of Edo and these people there's just no way like that's raw data right this you can't touch that um it's it's I mean even if you're forensically analyze that that inbox you

would see is not been tampered with uh but I think Warrior card had some suspicions over the recent years that that kind of thing could potentially happen which is why the company also told all employees to just move to telegram uh as a way of communications yeah so I guess um things just accelerated then that you were having good feelings that finally the truth is is kind of out did you hear anything

back then from from wirecard after everything was out yeah so there were uh employees and and you know I wouldn't describe who they are but people that I thought were trying to do the right thing with me at some point you know they turned around messaging me and I still have those messages saying you know you should think about your mom there's no point you've got a

Target on your back now why did you do this so they're really trying to suss out whether it was me that leaked info but the problem was that wirecard had leaked in for themselves once the investigation was going on so Edo and everybody knew about it right away once the board found out so it was very hard in that sense to pinpoint who was the Troublemaker who leaked these things uh so yeah I just said I just kind of ignored those messages and said look I'm just trying to find another job just leave me alone right

um because if you think about how everything transpired from January 2019 which which now I recalled the first ft article came out it's quite like a spike so you had the ft's first three articles have a lot of impact on the share price that triggered the Singapore uh white collar crimes police to rape the whole office but yet all the way from the first article till the end pretty much you had German law

enforcement and Regulators protecting the company by in many instances saying that there this is the Asia problem which is a very very unusual approach for any regulator or law enforcement agency to take you know what you would expect is that these agencies would say look we understand certain allegations have been made we are looking to wait until then we have no comment but yet from the very first of the article we have these you have the uh the people that buff in saying no

you know this is uh this is a short selling attempt uh you know and and all that kind of nonsense I mean you had ft journalists being investigated so what I had to do was a very long track right it was one and a half years before the company had to crash so once the Ft started having less impact I realized that the only way to change the sentiment is from within Germany because a lot of the German retail investors were viewing this as a Anglo-Saxon kind of thing it was brexit at the same time

right there were still those sentiments people were viewing it as though like okay you've got this UK aft paper they're jealous with our fintech darling of Germany the only one we have pretty much at that time in on that kind of you know valuation and so this is just like a UK versus Germany thing and why account was super sophisticated in terms of having thousands of why of bots and and Twitter armies every time someone would say something negative about them on Twitter these people these new

profiles will be created destroying them uh forums would be attacking these uh individuals so I also had to go on Twitter which a few people know and try to change the sentiment from there because what DFT and what the German press couldn't published for legal reasons I could under the anonymous name uh the anonymous handle that I had on Twitter so it was a very long one and a half year effort which is

super complex actually and even the movie doesn't encapsulate that sadly you know it to make this company uh you know face the insolvency event which and the investigations which they're undergoing as of today that was quite surprising to me as well when looking into the allegations that were around and a lot of bad news were kind of uncovered also in the in in the past and maybe even before the whistleblowing case as well but wirecard

somehow managed to get out all their time and the stock price kept you know increasing though there were serious allegations in in the room so that was must have driven you crazy as well I guess yeah it's extremely frustrating but I think again like as I said once there's a goal to be achieved it's it's just gonna keep on happening until I see it happen right

um I wasn't that fixated on it at some point I mean once the Ft articles came out once the two deutsches item articles came out uh naturally things just took a turn on their own they they had a life of their own uh you got hedge funds getting involved uh you had TCI the biggest hedge fund in Europe at that time I I think it still is that you know falso filed a criminal complaint uh a lot of things were actually happening uh

KPMG was also forced through you had the supervisory board change some of its members so things were actually gaining momentum uh all I had to do was just make sure that they were being channeled in the right way and people were looking at the right things one of the most shocking things to me was that KPMG despite doing that special investigation uh never reached out to me or any of the people who you know actually spoke to the Ft so I was also wondering how effective this is

going to be fly type uh audit um so yeah so there are a lot of real questions being asked and and of course we talk about ey and the role of Auditors and this whole thing to me it was completely shameful um we a lot of people rely on audit audit financial statements of the big four in order to stamp some form of legitimacy of what a company is doing but here we have just such a I don't even know I mean I don't even want to

use the wrong terms to describe it but you have a top four big four accounting firm for 10 years saying there's nothing going on everything's okay yeah that's it it is really just a surprising and a story that really you know is is like eye-opening and these things can happen um at such a large scale so but finally you managed the breakdown of of wirecard

and you know before going to the questions of the audience just the final question um to you um what is the biggest disappointment path to you in the entire story I think the biggest disappointment is the role of the way the law enforcement and Regulatory Agencies behaved in Germany I think as a country that portrays itself to be the leader of the EU

um the way those agencies behaved was just not what you would expect any of them to have done and I think even as of today what's also disappointing is the fact that so many things could have been done in order to prevent uh people from escaping like Jan Marseille and none of these things actually happen like it was just full full like there's just no way to

describe it like it's just it's just a shock okay thanks for letting us know about your story which is truly um unbelievable every time when you go through that that's really like unbelievable so I would pass over the word um to my colleagues in order to raise um the respective question that came in yeah maybe before time we jump into the

Q A's just a couple of follow-up questions um um with regards to the the you know topic of whistleblowing and then uh what the regulatory framework is actually there with I got Swiss oblong we see now there's an EU directive countries are obliged to Implement uh we're supporting framework within actually the next couple weeks um looking back and looking back to that you know captivating story of yours would you believe that things would have

turned out differently back in the days uh if something like that had been in place back then I don't know because if you're talking about regulatory bodies these might be the same bodies that put in place these directives but if they just don't want to look at it then there's no point having these directives in place and with all of what that if you learned I mean you mentioned a couple of things missing checks and balances Etc but with

all with all that if you learned the last couple years what would you consider typical red flags in fraud schemes like wirecut I think red flags would be if your products are not adding up uh in terms of for example tackle competitiveness with a lot of your competitors I mean a lot of your other companies out there uh if your financial statements of your subsidiaries are constantly loss making you're always filing your financials late your spending months sometimes even

a year arguing with Auditors you're hiring very inexperienced people in in senior roles um and I think at the end of the day it's really your sixth sense right like people always play it down but if something doesn't smell right I think often either you choose not to want to look at it but if you do you realize you would see things that you may not want to see um and and then it's just up to you do you get out of that situation or do you

dig deeper so would that be your your advice to anybody that maybe is on the call today um maybe they're facing similar challenges like you did um would that be your advice for your assistance your internal moral composition put it earlier yeah I mean it's a it that's just the problem with these things is there's no way to it's so Case by case because it also depends on the companies that you're working for right like if you have a very like wirecut was run like a family

business even though it was a DEX company you had those same board members other than the the CFO who changed the last one year and Susanna's title was promoted for diversity Reasons from what I understand um if you have like a very powerful old school car running the company and the company you suspect is doing all kinds of wrongdoings then you would you need to be wise enough to know that if you're going to raise these things it will go

up to the same people who are running these this whole place right but if you're talking about a a company which is very uh for example diverse and the power is spread between various uh departments in a very balanced way um then yeah maybe your compliance programs your visibility programs would have some effect um and oftentimes I think the difficulty which whistleblowers face is a very personal one which is they don't know if they're overthinking something

um or is there really something to it and again they don't know who to speak to right which is why I've advocated as of the last few months that governments actually create autonomous agencies which would act as counseling bodies to these whistleblowers on a purely confidential basis because sometimes you just need to talk to someone on a you know there's no incriminatory kind of setback this is just speaking to someone saying this is what I suspect am I on the right track or am I overthinking things if I'm on the right track then

please guide me as to what to do next um because yeah it's so complicated like you don't even know who to trust within the company uh including compliance people sometimes um absolutely wrapping everything up um there's lots of focus now on discipline of course that's also focus on you know getting green ESG um what's your personal take on operating

an ethical business versus shareholder value and profit maximization your own personal view on that I think uh they're just two ways to look at it one is if you want to do a get rich quick scheme and you want to do a fast sale a fast exit maybe you could do a lot of shortcuts and take slightly more questionable routes to it but if you're going if you really want to as a child although as a Founder you want to have a

long sustainable business and you really genuinely want to put compliance or legal aspects at the Forefront of what you're doing because you may think that so this is a problem for example in the crypto space right you have companies which say look investing and compliance structures and Technologies it's just increasing our cost Factor so you can say fine we disregard that but what would then happen is at any time there might be a regulatory sanction which would end up being more

damaging than if you had invested those same same amounts into your compliant structure so what do you want to so you everybody needs to ask themselves shareholders Founders you know staff whoever do you want to run a company where you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that you may have spent a bit more money you know for that security or do you want to take the risky approach and then also face risky consequences fantastic thanks I think that's a good way of wrapping everything up

uh Romana I think we have a couple of questions in the chat um May I hand over to you yeah thank you Christian um path we have some some questions for you the first ones uh what are some examples of the dubious practices and next one is what is the criminal energy was the criminal energy there from the very beginning or did it come over time okay so in terms of dubious practices uh I mean you had invoices which were

exactly the same as as wirecard invoices from companies which wirecard had no reason to do business with you had a company for example called matrimonial global which you couldn't even Google and the the one two hits that appeared would say that it's a matchmaking kind of company so why is a matchmaking dating company which nobody has heard of uh wanting to create a payment system um for hundreds and hundreds of thousands

of Euros so that's like an immediate red flag uh you if you have employees emailing themselves like logos of third bodies then that's also a red flag so those were examples of the dubious practices right uh you also the most important dubious practice on a more realistic level was the fact that the finance department operated in a very flexible way so if we needed to present financials finances to a regulator to get for example a license the finance department was flexible enough to create

a more positive outlook on how those numbers looked like right so that's another dubious practice because it should be an objective exercise not one where you can make a loss into a into a positive and submit that to a regulator um in terms of criminal energy I think yeah suspicions were there from the start but and with of course some of the staff members talking like Edo talking about his his uh direct criminal links

by his his in-laws so that's that's a bit of an energy there um yeah so so these things just increased over time obviously um okay um next question uh what do you think the auditor was aware of being competency of CFO if eui realized the fact why nothing happened well I can say uh as a fact having spoken to these guys that they did question the experience of

of Edo there were serious questions at least from the Singapore side on on Edo's experience levels and I did document those and raise them so you know they did even make suggestions that maybe we need a more sound uh experience uh Edo type figure on the ground to deal with why the significant delays for the last five years in submitting annual Financial reports where are you afraid that they would

directly trace the Ft article back to you yeah uh there definitely was that fear um but I mean I wouldn't even call it fair there was that that clear link because you know in their mind um this I was one of the people who had that info right uh but again because they made the mistake of leaking it even to those who were suspected of these wrongdoings

um there was just no 100 way to confirm who it was in fact I also found out from uh some of the journalists that who who have now looked at all the information uh in the Parliamentary inquiry they they did suspect someone else um all the way and they even engaged in intelligence um a company to engage in intelligence research on that person and simply because that person had booked a flight ticket from Singapore to Europe to to

the UK during that timing they were 100 convinced that it was that person more than me for example and you know that cost them 300 000 Euros um are you and your mom in a protection program now or can you live your life like before no so the funniest thing is that no one in Germany has said a word of things other than you know normal people like like all of us uh reaching out on

LinkedIn and on Twitter and stuff uh German government has not said anything I don't know I I doubt they're very happy with what happened um especially if you you trace like a lot of these agencies being exposed in terms of Competency in what happened um it's so it's kind of strange because on one hand you have someone who helped the country expose the biggest Financial scandal in in their modern history you would expect that to be some form of a

thank you at least um on the other hand if that's not then you question whether you are actually viewed as having done the right thing for them or you just viewed also like wirecard view as a troublemaker because now everyone's like running around dealing with this thing with Singapore hasn't said a word either so it's unprotected in Europe unprotected in Singapore currently I'm in Bangkok which of course there's no protections either okay

um how do you consider to be promoted within the organization an efficient whistleblowing channel in order to convince the staff members as well as the Senior Management that the whistleblowing is an efficient tool and not only a decorative or complicated way to rise a very sensitive issue Worth to mention that compliance officers are very often facing the reluctancy of stuff to use such a channel yeah I think the biggest challenge is is

if you want to whistle blow then what whistleblowers would want to be ensured of is anonymity right because they don't want any backlash on what's happened whether it's losing your job or uh or anything else for examples it could simply be defamation as well uh so I think from what I understand there's a lot of new technological products out there which are being offered to companies which will guarantee that the anonymity of those channels will be maintained

um and there's no way for example for a company to have raw get out informally which would then expose whoever sent that email uh so yeah I think if if we do look into these kinds of updated uh modern Technologies for whistleblowing programs then they could potentially be effective um and and finally I think also mindset wise right we need to change the mindset that if you're exposing uh uh fraudulent

act or criminal activity then that's not a bad thing um and I think a lot of countries need to to get get up to date with that kind of thinking it shouldn't be viewed as like you're writing on your company or you're biting the hand that feeds uh necessarily so this is a very you know these cultural shifts also take a while but I think in the year 2021 and going to 2022 with all the movements that we see in the world uh whether it's you

know BLM movements or previously the metoo movements I think there is a trend towards people just having had enough of nonsense as we as we're running a little bit out of time A funny question at the end you have the signs of the sweet game series on you is it on purpose oh no it's not on purpose it's not meant to symbolize anything it's just that I thought instead of wearing a boring shirt that I that I have done previously I'll

just try to modernize myself okay uh thank you Beth um I will hand over to you uh Patrick uh though we have some questions left but we are yeah out of time now yeah it's always when things are exciting and that was truly an exciting story perfect thank you for being with us today it was incredible and thank you also to the participants and our clients today in the session if you have any further questions please reach out to us even

after the sessions have a great day and if you attend any other session many exciting insights thank you thank you everyone thank you bye bye