Mr. McCrum, along with Paul Murphy and others bulldogged the Wirecard story so long and so hard that finally the German authorities, most especially BaFin, but also up into the highest ranks of the Government, had to take note of, and act on, the disclosures.
The effects are still being felt. Here's Bild, January 2, (machine translation, sorry, not feeling up to doing it myself):
The SPD is in a hangover mood when looking at the polls at the end of the year.
Approval fell from 20 to 15 percent over the course of 2023 (INSA survey for BILD from December 31st). Even worse: the gap to the Union (32 percent) has almost tripled from 6 to 17 percentage points. A key factor in the SPD debacle: Only one in five Germans recently rated Olaf Scholz's work as chancellor positively.
▶︎ Close your eyes and get through? There are apparently doubts about this SPD strategy, as the major Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” reports. She writes about “bad rumors” that were making the rounds in the Bundestag – without naming the rumor spreaders.Accordingly, the Chancellor could be forced to resign in 2024. There are already whispers about a possible successor “in one wing of the Social Democrats”: Boris Pistorius (63), the Federal Defense Minister who is more popular with the people.
What did Scholz have to do with Marsalek as finance minister?
The reason for the change in the Chancellery, according to two anonymous sources cited by the newspaper's Berlin correspondent: the scandal surrounding the fraud company Wirecard and its boss Jan Marsalek (43), who went into hiding. He is believed to be in Moscow and, according to new British and US findings, has long been playing a role in Putin's secret service, the FSB.
Scholz was Finance Minister under Merkel when the biggest scandal in German economic history since the Second World War was exposed in 2020. As minister, Scholz was responsible for the financial regulator BaFin, which did not notice the billion-dollar fraud involving air bookings. And this despite the fact that the financial service provider Wirecard was also a partner of the federal government and even processed sensitive payments for the Federal Intelligence Service.When that came out, the Greens, in their opposition role at the time, went to the barricades: “The information confirms the long-suspected connection between the BND and Wirecard,” raged Lisa Paus (55), today’s family minister at Scholz’s cabinet table. And: “The federal government is stonewalling when it comes to clarification. The investigative committee must finally shed light on the matter.”
Olaf Scholz has always denied shared responsibility for the scandal. But critics accused BaFin and thus also the Ministry of Finance of failing from the start. And to date, the Italian newspaper criticizes, the Finance Ministry has rejected every request to make the meetings between Wirecard boss, Scholz and his men public. Because there were previously unknown agreements between the government and the alleged Putin spy?....
....MUCH MORE
And if, you prefer the original: https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inland/pistorius-statt-scholz-wildes-geruecht-um-kanzler-tausch-86602778.bild.html
Some (there are many) of our post and links:
Free Dan McCrum
But first, who is Dan McCrum?
Sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man.
And I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.
Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here.
But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough.
Where to begin?.....
Last seen in Wirecard Flashback: "Dan McCrum Did Not Call The Germans Jackbooted Thugs", which also included our attempt to chronicle Mr. McCrum's early reportage with links to the FT articles and well, the not so glorious responses of the Germans including:
....Wirecard Statement 29 March 2019
Today’s FT reporting is part of a larger package of incorrect and misleading information which has been published by the FT since January 2019. We have already commenced legal proceedings against Dan McCrum and the Financial Times in the Munich Court in relation to the repeated and continuing disclosure and false representation of confidential information and/or company secrets as well as misquoting of documents.
The inaccurate information published today has been deliberately misquoted by the FT to further distort fact and fiction....Distorting fiction?
Among other posts, this one stood out:
April 2019Dear Paul Murphy: All is Forgiven, Please Tell The Toronto Sex Trafficking, Hookers and Wirecard Story
