He spent almost four years in prison for corruption in the United States. His company had made him a scapegoat and left him hanging. Now Oliver Manlik (Barnaby Metschurat) is back in Germany – and demands a hefty compensation from his boss. However, he coldly rejects his former employee. Shortly thereafter, the company’s HR manager is found dead in the woods. And an assassination attempt is made on the boss. The Stuttgart investigators Thorsten Lannert (Richy Müller) and Sebastian Bootz (Felix Klare) immediately suspect Manlik. But would he really commit murder?
The background to this case is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA for short. The US law is used to combat global corruption – and is also used against people and companies outside of America: Against companies whose securities are registered in the USA. The use case also occurs when credit cards from an American bank or the servers of a US company were used in a corrupt act.
The case is reminiscent of VW engineer Oliver Schmidt, who was arrested in Miami in 2017 for involvement in the emissions scandal and was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison. VW then fired its employees. Schmidt, on the other hand, claims that he did not act of his own accord and sees himself as a pawn sacrifice.
How does it feel when you have been made a scapegoat by your employer and have been in prison for more than three years? When you have lost everything after your release: wife, family and work – and nobody wants to hear anything about reparations. Barnaby Metschurat succeeds in convincingly portraying what goes on in such a man – and how love, anger and revengefulness wrestle with each other. His acting alone is worth tuning in to.
With all the praise for the strong case: Why the family completely hangs Oliver Manlik, who has been declared a scapegoat by his company, and breaks off all contact after his release from prison, is not entirely clear. Even if the man – as the film suggests – has made mistakes in the past: It is not entirely understandable that the wife and son accept the sad fate of the once beloved family member without any empathy.
Anyone who is interested in private banter and details from the life of the investigators is out of place here: This “crime scene” is all about the criminal case. It’s exciting enough.
“The World’s Wage” is definitely one of the better episodes from the crime series. Turn on.
This “Tatort” episode was first broadcast on November 1, 2020. ARD repeats the case on Sunday, August 6th at 8:15 p.m.
Inspectors Lannert and Bootz also investigated in these cases:
