New Blog
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.Today (April 19th, 2022) the German Press reports that the Munich prosecutors filed an extradition request with the Russian government for Jan Marsalek, the former CFO for Wirecard — and suspected architect of the Wirecard fraud.
Wirecard's CFO
The article also claims that the Russian intelligence service FSB (formerly KGB) hid Mr. Marsalek in a hideout in Moskau. The request also shall contain the exact address of the place where he is hidden since January 2021.
The German foreign intelligence service BND is claimed to have known this since 2021. Only a press article has revealed the BND’s knowledge, which led two prosecutors from Munich to visit the BND in Berlin to have a look through the secret BND files on Mr. Marsalek. It is claimed that the Kanzleramt (office of the German Chancellor) has been informed by BND before. Also, Russian authorities are claimed to have offered an opportunity to interrogate Mr. Marsalek.
Below we will share again the article we published about Mr. Marsalek in July 2020 in our old blog.
The most interesting man in the Wirecard scandal
As the largest accounting fraud in the history of post-war Germany unravels more and more information surfaces. It turns out the COO Jan Marsalek — accused to be the architect of the fraud — is a person turning this story into a James Bond novel. He vanished on June 18th, 2020 — the day he was fired from Wirecard.
Mr. Marsalek’s Rise in Wirecard
Jan Marsalek is a 40-year-old Austrian national, married to a Filipina. He was hired originally because he was familiar with WAP, an early form of internet access from mobile phones. He got a job despite having no university degree or even vocational training (according to Spiegel) — very uncommon in Germany — where HR looks at the qualifications of candidates thoroughly.
Mr. Marsalek was famous in his come country of Austria, where Chancellor Sebastian Kurz appointed him to his »Think Austria « strategic team, which is headed by the “shadow chancellor” Antonella Mei-Pochtler who is said to be vastly influential. But his influence and prominence have not always been the case.
The first project of Mr. Marsalek at Wirecard failed, costing almost 2 mn Deutsche Mark (the currency before the introduction of the Euro, approx. 1 mn Euros), endangering the future of the — then—small company. This brought in an external consultant from KPMG: Dr. Markus Braun (who would later become CEO). After the insolvency and takeover, Mr. Braun became CEO and Mr. Marsalke CTO. Later Mr. Marsalek became COO and has also been in charge of the Asia business at Wirecard.
Back to Today
An international warrant has been issued for his arrest — but he eludes the authorities. While Mr. Braun is now jailed (he had been released and jailed again), Mr. Marsalek is still on the run. We may digress quite a bit from the normal Startuprad.io topics, but we do this to give you a much more background story about the Wirecard case. Further posts will be much more “startup-like” again.
Possible Drivers of the Accounting Fraud
It appears that the whole fraud was set up in the first place to hide losses in the core business of the payment processor. Wirecard used to make money from processing payments for online pornography and online gambling. In 2006 the USA prohibited online gambling, which was a profitable business for the company until then.
In 2007 Mr. Braun and Mr. Marsalek set up the SPV Trustpay to acquire companies. And acquiring they did! In India, Brazil, Gibraltar, and Singapore, just to name a few. In some cases, it is yet unclear who were the sellers of those businesses. In 2015 they bought a company in India from EMIF 1A fund for 340 mn Euros, which changed hands for 37 mn Euros just weeks before (Source). The FT speculates this may be a case of round-tripping.
Wirecard was repeatedly accused of money laundering, but so far no one was sentenced. This may change as a consequence of the ongoing investigations.
Also noteworthy here: The Philippines are seen (according to Der Spiegel) as a hotspot for money laundry and many banks retreated from the market or segments of the market there. The claimed 1.9 bn Euros in cash should have been held with two local banks, BDO and BPI. The money would have made up approx. 5% of all of the Philippines foreign currency reserves. The trustee Mark Tolentino, was a former assistant secretary of the Philippine Department of Transportation (DOTr), before being fired from this post (learn more about him here, or here in German).
Unearthed background information on Mr. Marsalek
Der Spiegel and Financial Times write Mr. Marsalek was running a double life. Some details differ, but both agree he was drawn to dictators and spies. Many stories are written with information about people near to him or some protocols of chats he had with them.
Just some of the highlights the journalists unearthed about him:
· In 2018 he tried to recruit 15,000 Libyan militiamen
· He had passed on classified documents from Austria’s interior ministry and security service
· On one occasion, he was overheard in a parallel conversation in the same room discussing “equipment” being sent to Libya
· He tried to introduce people to Andrey Chuprygin, who “had a long career serving with the Russian military in the Middle East”
· He appears to (co)-own a cement factory, which was used as Russian barracks in Libya
· He claimed he would have no problem securing armed force on the ground from Russia (due to a relationship with Russian “security specialists”)
· He possessed documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which are said to include the precise formula for novichok — called the world’s deadliest nerve agent (FT).
· Mr. Masalek is said to be a person of interest to three western intelligence services (FT).
· It appears his individual network is linked to the Russian military intelligence directorate (GRU)
· In 2017 Jan Marsalek also reportedly boasted in a private meeting about a trip he had made to the ruins of Palmyra, in Syria, as a guest of the Russian military shortly after its recapture from ISIS. (Source)
· He was reportedly tracked by the Russian FSB (formerly KGB) in a database used for tracking persons of interest, primarily for law enforcement purposes
After reading through a — not
conclusive list — of Mr.
Marsalek’s claims and actions, one can imagine that his escape unfolds like a Bond novel as well. He was fired from his position on June 18th, 2020. He went missing that very day.
Philippines
Since his wife is from the Philippines, this seems to be the hiding ground of choice. That said, he can be confirmed to have been in the Philippines only from March 3rd to 5th 2020.
Philippines & China (fake trip)
Wirecard filed for insolvency on June 25th, 2020. At this time the South China Morning Post reported that he arrived in Manila on Jun 23rd (Bureau of Immigration’s database) and left for Chongqing, China on June 24th. He was allowed entrances — despite the coronavirus — since he traveled with his Filipina wife. SMCP also reports that at the Cebu airport in Manila, there is no sign of him on the airport’s CCTV.
Was he really there at all? No! It appears there have been local officials making false entries in the database.
Belarus
No information here.
Russia
One of the potential hideaways of Mr. Marsalek could be Russia, which is reported by several media outlets (Business Insider, Bellingcat).
Bellingcat is an especially good source here, we highly recommend their article here, from which we only took some passages here. Bellingcat can confirm 60 trips to Russia within 10 years, visiting first in 2004 — usually lasting only one or two days. His trips accelerated in 2014. Bellingcat also claims his immigration dossier of 597 pages. Marsalek traveled to Russia on 6 different Austrian passports.
Marsalek’s Russian migration file contains references to 3 additional passports — issued in his name by an unnamed country — one of them a diplomatic passport — with the number DA0000051 — is described in the migration file as a “diplomatic passport issued to a non-citizen”.
“There’s a million reasons [for the Russians] to get involved with Wirecard,” a Dutch official told Business Insider. “Russian officials always need to move money to the West, and Wirecard was raising lots of money but not as much as they told investors.” Business Insider
Der Spiegel (The Mirror)
Full disclosure here — this article was inspired by the journalists working in one of Germany’s leading magazines Der Spiegel. They are the epicenter of investigative journalism in Germany — ever since Der Spiegel is around (1947).
Comments