Not only Wirecard, here is the latest banking scandal in Germany: DHB
Handelsblatt has blasted another banking scandal in Germany after Wirecard; the case concerns the Deutsche Handelsbank of Munich (DHB)
There is no peace for the German banking world. After Cyclone Wirecard, another scandal could affect a new German credit institution, the Deutsche Handelsbank of Munich (DHB). This was revealed by Handelsblatt , in a long article based on its own research and on the complaints of a non-profit organization for the protection of defrauded investors, the EFRI of Vienna, according to which the scam that sees the small Bavarian bank at the center is similar in many ways that of Wirecard, even if the dimensions should be smaller.
Similar is the mechanism that would have led the Deutsche Handelsbank to become a payment processor for a network of dubious online platforms that promised retail investors more or less gambling winnings thanks to the use of intelligent algorithms. The algorithm didn't exist and in the end neither did the winnings, since all of a sudden the money disappeared. To attract customers, in addition to their greed and the presence of more or less credible digital platforms, the support with the Bavarian institute, considered reliable in the mechanism set up by the scammers.
The Munich prosecutor's office is currently investigating. Spokespersons interviewed by Handelsblatt from Munich reject any responsibility, remarking that neither the bank, nor its top management nor individual employees are officially investigated by the magistrates and that the investigations are directed towards "unknown". They point out that the institute actively collaborates with the prosecutor's office and are confident that in the end DHB will come out clean and strengthened in its work of change of strategy undertaken for two years now.
But if a change was necessary, indeed we are talking about a real turning point, evidently the course of the previous years must have aroused more than some increased concern – so argue critical analysts such as Volker Brühl, director of the Center for Financial Studies of the University of Frankfurt – when the effects of the Wirecard affair were seen.
The Handelsblatt journalists were able to read in the papers the notification submitted by the collaborators of EFRI, the European Funds Recovery Initiative, to the Munich public prosecutor. The Viennese organization, which acts to protect 322 European citizens defrauded for a value of 11.5 million euros, presented Bavarian magistrates with "documents, statements and evidence that justify the suspicion that Deutsche Handelsbank AG has made large financial transfers in in relation to fraudulent online trading websites ”.
The mechanism has been known since at least 2019, when the Saarbrücken prosecutor's office brought to light the first major round of online fraud, behind which a highly organized European mafia operates and is able to operate in a capillary manner in the territory, thanks to the complacency of ordinary credit institutions. In general, more than 200,000 Germans have fallen into these traps so far and the losses amount to billions of euros, according to the Saarbrücken magistrates.
In the DHB case, the bank would have been the support channel for a triangulation made up of call centers operating in the Balkans, apparently credible online gambling and lottery platforms and, precisely, Deutsche Handelsbank. The small Bavarian credit institution, owned by the billionaire Reimann family, with its 70 employees and a balance sheet of 820 million euros, played a fundamental role, precisely because it was considered reliable by scammed investors.
For Elfriede Sixt, director of EFRI, what has emerged so far is only the tip of the iceberg. "Most of the victims do not even report," he told Handelsblatt , "there are countless online scam sites run by a large, well-structured mafia-type criminal organization." In the complaint to the magistrates, Sixt and his collaborators name some sites, taken from the German newspaper: Connectum Limited, MoneynetINt, LeeWay Financials or HandelFX. They are portals that, according to the indictment, have simulated accounts with Deutsche Handelsbank, "while other suppliers actually had their own accounts in Munich".
The warning signs were actually more than enough. Some of these operators had long been reported by the European financial supervisory authorities in relation to fraud and other companies were in known proceedings because they were already disclosed in the press. For Handelsblatt , the reasons that would have pushed the Bavarian institute to get involved in this affair could be found in its difficulties after a very successful start in the early 1910s. According to Volker Brühl, the management would have tried to answer “by copying the hypothetical recipe for success of Wirecard, the offer to customers of high-risk payments”.
For just over a year, DHB has decided to change course, entrusting the leadership to two new managers, Frank Schlaberg and Gerhard Grebe. Ten of the eleven suspicious accounts reported by EFRI to the Munich public prosecutor have been closed, of the 210 Payment-Service-Providers 20 remained operational. German. Schlaberg explained to the Handelsblatt what the cure consists of: “The old management had a great risk appetite. We have changed it and are reorganizing the Deutsche Handelsbank. In doing so, we have separated ourselves from numerous previous clients. We only accept new customers in a very selective way and after careful consideration ". But today's broom may not cover the illegalities of the recent past. The prosecutor is investigating, for now against unknown persons, but in the Munich bank it is feared that soon the faces of the suspects could have well-known features.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/non-solo-wirecard-ecco-lultimo-scandalo-bancario-in-germania-dhb/ on Mon, 05 Jul 2021 07:31:10 +0000.