The dishonest Germans

The next time a German minister lectures another member of the European Union about the need to obey the rules, the target of the criticism might be forgiven for turning the tables.

The country that loves to hector others on the evils of moral hazard, to demand strict enforcement of EU fiscal rules and to depict Southern European countries as endemically corrupt, is mired in a cesspit. Scandal has struck Germany’s vaunted automobile industry, its largest engineering giant and its biggest bank — and there’s more than a suspicion that Berlin has long turned a blind eye.

Germany may be no cleaner or dirtier than other European countries. But it’s certainly more self-righteous. And so it’s hard to avoid a shiver of Schadenfreude at the mounting reports of unsavory — and possibly illegal — behavior by some of its biggest business brands.

The latest affair to tarnish the reputation of Deutschland AG  — Germany Inc. — as the cozy relationship between business and politics is often called, involves more than two decades of reported collusion among the top five German automobile companies, revealed by Der Spiegel magazine.

German and EU cartel authorities are investigating whether Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler, Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche and Audi held regular secret meetings to discuss technical standards, suppliers and pricing, to the detriment of foreign competitors.

According to the report, it was Volkswagen, desperate to clean up its act and avoid further legal damage after being caught systematically cheating on pollution emissions tests in the United States, that blew the whistle to the German Federal Cartel Office. Since then, reports have said Daimler beat VW to the whistleblowing punch.

It’s not just Germany’s vaunted automobile industry that’s been looking shady lately.

The probe into suspected anti-competitive behavior was hushed up for a year until Der Spiegel published its scoop. BMW denied illegal behavior. The other manufacturers have not commented, and industry association VDA said it was not involved.

Companies found guilty of violating EU cartel rules face fines of up to 10 percent of their worldwide turnover. However, the first participant to denounce an illicit anti-competitive conspiracy is exempted from paying a penalty.

For example, the two big German truckmakers — MAN and Daimler — were among five companies involved in a price-fixing cartel on which the European Commission imposed €2.93 billion in fines last year. MAN was not fined because it revealed the existence of the cartel in 2011.

But it’s not just Germany’s vaunted automobile industry that’s been looking shady lately. Last year, Deutsche Bank reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over an investigation into misselling of mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007, in which home loans to unqualified borrowers were repackaged as safe investments and sold on to others.

The collapse of residential-backed mortgage securities was a major factor in triggering the 2008 global financial crisis (which itself unleashed hordes of German moralizers). Deutsche Bank has also been fined over its U.K. subsidiary’s manipulation of LIBOR interest rates and for failing to prevent some $10 billion of Russian money laundering.

Meanwhile, German engineering powerhouse Siemens stands accused of having supplied gas turbines for electricity generators that will enable Russia to open two power stations in occupied Crimea, ending the annexed peninsula’s dependence on energy from Ukraine, from which Moscow seized the region in 2014.

Providing power equipment for Crimea violates European Union sanctions, but Siemens says the turbines were diverted by its state-owned Russian client without its knowledge, in breach of contract and despite past warnings from the company.

Siemens initially denied a Reuters report this month that two of its turbines had been shipped to Crimea from adjoining southwestern Russia. Then it said it was investigating. Then it admitted the equipment had been moved “against our will” and said it would sue its Russian client, Technopromexport, and its own majority-owned Russian subsidiary, Siemens Gas Turbine Technologies. It now says it is halting the export of all power-generating technology to Russia.

The explanations sound naive at best. As reported by the Ukrainian investigative website Euromaidanpress, there was publicly available evidence Moscow was racing to build power stations in Crimea calibrated to use Siemens turbines. And plans for the electrical plant just across the Sea of Azov, for which the machines were officially destined, were still their infancy.

German manufacturers can charge a premium for their “ultimate driving machines” because of their reputation for what an ad once plastered across Europe trumpeted as “Deutsche Qualität.”

Taking a page out of the crisis communications playbook, the Munich-based conglomerate has depicted itself as a victim of Russian deception and loudly slammed the stable gate after the horses have bolted.

The affair is an embarrassment for Berlin, which took the diplomatic lead in pressing for EU sanctions against Russian companies and individuals involved in Moscow’s seizure of Crimea. Chancellor Angela Merkel even argued that the move has torn up the rules-based European legal order in force since the end of World War II.

A German government spokesperson said senior Russian officials had given assurances that the turbines would not be used in Crimea, and Berlin was studying the potential consequences of this “unacceptable” operation.

In a textbook model of buck-passing, the spokesperson said it was up to companies to make sure they did not violate the sanctions regime — but did not suggest Siemens would face any action over the affair.

One common thread among the raft of corporate scandals is that the German government has not been at the forefront of exposing or investigating them. On the contrary, it was regulators in the U.S. (and to a lesser extent, in Brussels) who unmasked bad behavior by Deutsche Bank and Volkswagen.

Martin Winterkorn, former Volkswagen AG CEO testifies at the Bundestag commission investigating the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Volkswagen paid a $2.8 billion criminal fine plus $1.5 billion in civil penalties in the United States in April for rigging its diesel-powered vehicles with defeat software to cheat on government emissions tests. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uncovered the violation in 2015.

VW had to recall 11 million vehicles, out of which about 8 million were sold in Europe. The scandal underscored the weakness of the EU’s fragmented regulatory regime and authorities’ lax enforcement of the rules. The German carmaker agreed to pay about €15 billion in compensation to U.S. drivers, but brushed aside calls to compensate its European customers due to different consumer protection rules in the bloc.

German manufacturers can charge a premium for their “ultimate driving machines” because of their reputation for what an ad once plastered across Europe trumpeted as “Deutsche Qualität.”

But what if the technological advance vaunted in slogans such as “Vorsprung durch Technik” turns out to have been “Vorsprung durch Cheating” — built on secret technical stitch-ups and price-fixing?

Oh Lord, would you still buy me a Mercedes-Benz?