Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard

James Erskine's 2022 documentary covers one of Germany's largest financial scandals. The payments company Wirecard impressed the financial world for years with extraordinary growth, until the persistent work of the Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum and his colleagues showed that billions of euros on the balance sheet did not exist. The company collapsed in 2020 and one of its executives disappeared. The most striking element is the pressure the journalists faced: surveillance, hacking attempts, and the German financial regulator turning its investigation toward the reporters instead. That opens an uncomfortable question about whom the regulator was protecting. The form is standard: interviews, reconstructions, graphics. In simplifying the complexity, Erskine moves past some of the financial detail too quickly. Who it's for: viewers interested in financial scandal, investigative journalism and corporate fraud. Who it's not for: anyone who will struggle to follow financial terminology, or bothered by a documentary reaching for the language of a thriller.