By Kilian Schroeder
“I mean, I just want a big story”, Dan McCrum says. “That’s what it is all about, isn’t it?” The 45-year-old Brit is on the way and has only time for a 20-minute phone call – being an investigative journalist for the Financial Times is a busy life. When he talks in television interviews about the time he uncovered one of the biggest business scandals in decades, he smiles like a child that is very excited.
For him, it all started out as a paperboy at the newsagent above which he grew up. “I always read newspapers, and I think deep down I always wanted to become a journalist. But I didn’t see a way to do it.” After studying Economics and Politics at Durham University, he “faced the money” and started as an analyst at the American Citibank. One day, someone asked him: If you could do any job in the world, which one would it be? And without hesitation, he answered: A journalist. “They looked at me like I was stupid and said: Well, you should go and do that”, McCrum says.
A paperboy and Russian spies
But how does one get a job as a reporter when the only experience is as a paperboy? For him, it was the knowledge about finance that helped. He started as a company writer at the Investors Chronicle and since it was owned by the same company as the Financial Times, he saw an internal job offer and took his chance. McCrum started in 2007 as a writer of opinion pieces, later changed positions to an US investment correspondent in New York and eventually joined the investigative department in London. Today, he lives with his family in St. Albans.
Quickly he encountered a “species called short sellers”, who look for companies where the share price is going down – often companies with accounting problems or which are up to no good. McCrum was interested, he started to write about these short sellers and eventually the companies they were interested in. One of them was the German “Wirecard”, a digital payment company that looked shady, but was very profitable. As soon as McCrum started to investigate it, the company tried everything they could to stop him – be it private detectives, hacking or undermining his credibility. At points, even the German financial authority started investigating – but not Wirecard, but Dan McCrum.
“I was obsessed with Wirecard”, Dan McCrum says now. “And it grew in a sense that there was something very wrong about the company which people refused to take seriously.” After six years and a crucial leak, he and his colleagues were able to prove that a large portion of the company’s profits were made up – 1.9 billion euros just did not exist. Wirecard’s CEO Markus Braun was arrested, and the COO Jan Marsalek disappeared – he is suspected to have been a Russian spy.
Keep digging in the field of white-collar crime
This story not only got Dan McCrum countless awards, a book called “Money Men” and a Netflix documentary. It also changed him as a journalist. “I learned a lot of valuable lessons”, he says. The most important one: Being careful. “In these sort of high stakes stories, you can’t make mistakes.” He keeps on digging in the field of white-collar crime, sometimes also in collaborations like the OCCRP. “The world is full of stories about the powerful exploiting those who don’t have it.” Although, McCrum admits, he would also enjoy a live as a Maui-Surf-Correspondent.
But for now, investigative journalism has his heart – or “normal journalism with more time”, as he says. “I think a mistake people make is thinking that the point is to become an expert. But the point is to find expert sources”, he says. Young journalists could learn it by just doing it. And: “I think you never regret making that extra phone call.” Will he ever be able to leave the Wirecard-story behind? On the phone, he does not sound like it. “We haven’t got to the bottom of it yet”, Dan McCrum says. “And I still think there are aspects to this story that will blow people’s minds.”
Biographical Information
- Born in October 1978
- Joined the Financial Times in 2007
- Published the first article about Wirecard in 2015
- Awarded “Journalist of the Year” at the 2020 British Journalism Awards