he story Matthew Earl tells is of a black Mercedes-Benz, which parked outside his home and started following him. He claims it was intended to send a deliberate message: that he and his family – including two young children – were under surveillance. After a couple of days, he says, two men emerged from the car to deliver a legal letter from their client, the German payments company Wirecard.
Through its lawyers Kroll said that it had “acted entirely in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations”, that Earl’s claim was “misconceived” and that the company denied the claim in full. Jones Day did not respond to requests for comment. An opinion article published in late 2019 in City AM, a London financial newspaper, laid out the pros and cons of short-selling. There are “some notable examples where short-sellers have identified structural flaws in companies, and prompted market corrections in their price,” it said. “In some instances, frauds or poor accounting practices have been discovered by the shorting activity of thoughtful investors.
Wirecard’s former headquarters in Aschheim near Munich, Germany. The company’s shares fell after Earl published his first anonymous report.Earl had published the first of his anonymous reports on Wirecard AG on 24 February 2016 from Zatarra Research, a website he co-founded anonymously. The effect of the report was dramatic: Wirecard’s shares fell by 21% on the day of publication.