The beautiful fairy tale of Eric Ben-Artzi, the mathematician and financier who returned the millionaire "bounty" to the Sec for having unmasked the inflated quotations of Deutsche Bank derivatives leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. "Thank you - the former head of the bank's risk management office wrote to the US Stock Exchange sheriffs - but I do not intend to participate in the looting". And so he gave up a good part of the amount (8,25 million dollars) that was owed to him, withholding only the fees to be paid to the lawyers who assisted him in the dispute and the alimony to be paid to his ex-wife. Even so, he gave up at least three million dollars, "a sum that would have made me more comfortable today than ever." But not enough to come to terms with one's conscience.
The US authorities, he accuses, have indeed punished the improprieties with a fine of 55 million, recognizing Ben-Artzi, the "deep throat" of the investigation, a part of the fine as required by US legislation. But to pay, accuses the whistleblower (or "the whistleblower", a term that does not belong to the Italian vocabulary) was the bank, or its shareholders and employees impoverished by the consequences of fraudulent actions. Not the executives responsible for the crimes from which they have made substantial profits. A non-random choice, insists the former manager, because among the investigators of the supervisory body there are plenty of lawyers who have worked for Deutsche Bank or in any case close to the institute's top management for business reasons.
The tip of the iceberg of a gigantic conflict of interest involving a large part of the financial world. Not just the US. The result is that (sometimes) the banks are called to answer for damages and crimes. But the punishment rarely affects executives, guilty, for example, of having granted credit with too much (and suspect) generosity which today have turned into substandard and non-performing loans to the detriment of shareholders and public money. Meanwhile, yesterday's news, Deutsche Bank is back in the sights of the US authorities (the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) for new irregularities in the management of accounts. Confirming that behind the crisis of the German banking giant that threatens the financial stability of the European Union much more than Monte Paschi there is greed and the absence of controls. As demonstrated by the parable of this mathematical genius lent to the world of finance.
Ben-Artzi, the protagonist of an exceptional story, is himself an exceptional fellow. His father is a professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, while his aunt Sarah is the wife of Prime Minister Beniamin Netaniahu. His brother Jonathan is also a mathematician but lives in exile in London after spending two years in prison in Israel for conscientious objection, demonstrating that there is no shortage of "hard heads" in the family, ready to pay steep prices for consistency.
Eric, our hero, did his military service (three years in the navy) before returning to the USA where he had already won several math competitions. Wall Street did not miss this brain: first job in Citigroup, then entry into the derivatives desk of Goldman Sachs, Then, in 2010, the landing in Deutsche Bank in a position less linked to the stress of the trading rooms, more dedicated to the study and analysis of the products. And here the troubles begin. It doesn't take long to realize that the products that DB sells as non-leveraged are actually anything but. “It was like placing a Kia as if it were a BMW” he writes in his complaint. The reaction? His superiors told him that an internal investigation was already underway, woe if he turned to the SEC. But a few months later Ben-Artzi was fired because, the letter said, the section would be transferred from New York to Berlin. It was a bad blow: in November 2011 the risk officer found himself out of work, practically marginalized in the Wall Street community, forced to accept a job as a math teacher far from New York, now too expensive. The son had to leave private school , a few months time and Ben Artzi found himself facing a divorce that was too expensive for his pockets.
Thing of the past. Ben Atzi is back in Israel today: his salary at BondIt, a fintech company that analyzes bond portfolios, is a fraction of what it once was. But he does what he likes, which is to discover the tricks behind safe investments. “And I discovered – he confesses – that Israel is perhaps more corrupt than the USA”. But one draws back: "I hope someone follows my example by denouncing the dishonest." It's a mid-summer fairy tale: let's believe it, at least for a few days.
