In September 2014, the FT’s Dan McCrum received a tip about a fast-growing German fintech group, Wirecard. Over the next couple of years Dan and his colleagues uncovered the secret behind the payment company’s meteoric growth: many of the customers listed in company documents did not exist. In this episode Dan tells the story of the whistleblowers, shoe-leather reporting, hacking, suspected surveillance and legal threats that led to Wirecard’s downfall.   --- Review clips: CNBC, Deutsche Welle  Further reading: The double life of Wirecard’s Jan Marsalek https://www.ft.com/content/511ecf86-ab40-486c-8f76-b8ebda4cc669 Inside Wirecard https://www.ft.com/wirecard Dan’s 2015 story for Alphaville https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/04/27/2127427/the-house-of-wirecard/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, it was as if a fire was ignited. His death, along with the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery have sparked the most widespread protests in the US since 1968. Hundreds of thousands of people have marched under banners such as “Black Lives Matter”, “No Justice, No Peace” and “Say Their Names”. Now, the voices of activists are converging around a call to “defund the police”. In this episode, we hear from Rachel Harmon, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, and Vesla M Weaver, a professor of political science and sociology at Johns Hopkins University, about the role the federal government, and federal funding, have played in transforming policing in the US. --- To get free access to the FT’s Coronavirus Business Update newsletter for 30 days, visit ft.com/behindthemoneycovid or https://www.ft.com/newsletter-signup/coronavirus?segmentId=12f1abd6-6f16-e2df-e4ff-7aaa9346f98e. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.