Enrichment at Wirecard: Marsalek is said to have derived half a billion


Enrichment at Wirecard
Marsalek is said to have derived half a billion

New revelations in the Wirecard scandal: The former CFO Jan Marsalek is said to have embezzled more than 500 million euros with his network of accomplices. This and other offenses emerge from the arrest warrant against him.

The hiding Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek is said to have embezzled more than half a billion euros together with confidants. According to information from "Süddeutscher Zeitung", NDR and WDR as well as the Austrian news magazine "Profil", the manager and alleged accomplices at Wirecard had "diverted" 505 million euros from the group from 2018 to 2020 in the European arrest warrant of the Munich district court against Marsalek , say put aside.

That happened through loans for companies in Asia. They got the loans for businesses that didn't even exist. In one case Marsalek diverted 35 million euros "for its own purposes". He is said to have enriched himself in his own company. Marsalek's lawyers did not comment on the allegations when asked.

The judiciary accuses the former Wirecard manager of having committed at least 15 crimes between 2015 and 2020. Four cases of balance sheet falsification and manipulation of Wirecard's share price; at least five cases of particularly serious misappropriation of Wirecard's assets; at least six cases of professional gang fraud.

A conspiratorial community invents business

Investigative documents show that Marsalek had created his own empire at Wirecard. With little more than half a dozen close confidants who formed a close community. And the largely fictitious business in Asia with local partner companies, so-called third-party partners, who artificially inflated Wirecard's balance sheets. The main allegations, in addition to the misappropriation of corporate assets, are: falsification of balance sheets amounting to billions and fraud against donors, especially the house banks, also amounting to billions.

How bold Marsalek is supposed to have acted is shown by a process from the end of March 2020. At that time, Wirecard granted the Ocap company in Singapore, behind which a former Wirecard colleague from Marsalek is, a further loan of 100 million euros. According to the investigators' findings, Ocap then passed on part of the money to a company in Lithuania. This company in turn transferred 35 million euros to a holding company, which in turn passed the amount on to Marsalek.

Marsalek is said to have used the money to largely settle a personal loan that Wirecard CEO Markus Braun had granted him. The 35 million also appear in the arrest warrant against Marsalek, under the heading: "For the accused's own purposes". If the investigators' research is correct, Marsalek would have obtained 35 million euros from the company's coffers shortly before the unveiling of the sham deals at Wirecard and before the subsequent bankruptcy of the group. The then CEO Braun does not want to have known about it.

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