While reporting on the coronavirus crisis in northern Italy this year, Rome correspondent Miles Johnson discovered an equally concerning story in the country’s south. Italy’s most powerful organised crime group, the ‘Ndrangheta, had infiltrated local hospitals and packaged millions of plundered euros into global investment funds and portfolios. In the first episode of Behind the Money’s fourth season, Miles follows the money trail in a cautionary tale for the era of ultra-low interest rates.  Read Miles’ full investigation here: https://www.ft.com/content/8850581c-176e-4c5c-8b38-debb26b35c14. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.