The Munich public prosecutor’s office is investigating a possible link between the Lithuanian fintech Finolita and the embezzlement of more than €100 million from the Wirecard payment service in the weeks before its collapse. сообщает Financial Times, citing a source familiar with the case.
According to investigators, more than a third of the missing funds went to the fugitive former Wirecard chief operating officer Jan Marsalek.
Founded in 2013, the fintech startup Finolita offered international banking services. Its clients included gambling and other high-risk companies.
In 2017, the startup was acquired by the Singapore-based payments group Senjo Group.
According to documents, in the first quarter of 2020, Senjo and its structures borrowed around €350 million from Wirecard. €100 million of this sum was a loan taken by the group’s subsidiary Ocap. The funds were transferred to Finolita’s accounts.
Subsequently, up to €35 million went to Marsalek, who used them to partially repay funds borrowed from the fund of Wirecard’s chief executive Marcus Braun, according to sources.
Other sources told the publication that Braun himself used these funds to repay a €35 million loan he took in early 2020 from Wirecard Bank. The fate of the remaining €65 million of the Wirecard loan to Ocap is unknown. The Ocap company itself declared insolvency in December 2020.
The prosecutor’s office is also examining suspicious Wirecard payments to Finolita totaling €1.15 million.
In February 2019, Finolita received a licence from the Bank of Lithuania to perform payment operations. It remained valid even a year after the Wirecard fraud. The regulator took no action.
Ekaterina Govina, head of the Bank of Lithuania’s Financial Market Supervisory Service, said Finolita has been under the central bank’s investigation since the start of autumn 2020.
Following the start of the investigation into Finolita, European politicians urged Lithuania усилить финансовый надзор отрасли.
In June 2020, it was revealed that Wirecard’s accounts showed a hole in its balance sheet of almost €2 billion. The company subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
Former Wirecard top executive Jan Marsalek, described as the mastermind behind accounting fraud, disappeared days before Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant. Under suspicion of organizing an escape, arrested were a former senior official of the Austrian secret service and a former right-wing member of parliament.
Marsalek’s whereabouts remain unknown. Some reports say he fled to Russia.
Former Wirecard employees stated that for years their colleagues carried plastic bags containing cash out of the Munich headquarters. The total amount of these funds amounted to several million euros.
How Wirecard collapsed: dubious clients, forged reports and a €2 billion hole
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