By Tyler Durden
It’s been a while since we have had an update about the collapse of Wirecard, the German fintech giant that collapsed amid revelations that billions of dollars in earnings had been falsified via an elaborate shell game of moving money around Southeast Asia. As some might remember, short sellers and reporters had been warning about potential fraud at Wirecard for years – but instead of investigating these claims, the German government investigated the reporters and short-sellers instead.
Before its collapse, Wirecard was declared a fintech darling and added to Germany’s benchmark DAX index. But an audit eventually revealed that fraudsters, including management, had looted $1 billion from the company, leaving creditors on the hook for billions of dollars. After the collapse, the former CEO Markus Braun was arrested by German authorities (although he quickly made bail).
But it was soon revealed that another senior executive, Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek, had managed to flee Austria on a private jet to Minsk ahead of Wirecard’s collapse. He has evaded authorities ever since. It was eventually revealed that Marsalek wasn’t exactly who he claimed to be. Not only that, but he apparently had close ties to foreign intelligence agencies, including – of course – the spooky, scary Russians. German authorities quietly cleaned up one of Europe’s biggest financial messes in recent memory, although many of the country’s top regulators remain in their positions despite failing to detect the fraud earlier.
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