The chief operating officer of the Wirecard payment-card issuer, which collapsed at the end of June, Jan Marsalek, is allegedly living in a private house near Moscow under the control of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The German edition Handelsblatt reports this, citing unnamed acquaintances of Marsalek.
The article describes the route of the top executive who fled after a €1.9 billion hole was found in the company9;s accounts:
“From Klagenfurt, Austria, he flew by private plane to Tallinn, and then to Minsk. Then the SVR insisted on transporting Marsalek from Belarus to the Moscow region, because being near the Russian capital was allegedly ‘safer than there’, and pledged to shield him from extradition.”
According to the source, professional help from abroad is evidenced by the fact that Jan Marsalek managed to go underground relatively quickly after the Wirecard scandal.
The fugitive could have been a “payment courier” for Russia and, it is likely, transferred money for masked Russian investments in “failed states”, as well as to pay mercenaries in Syria, Ukraine and in African countries, the paper suggests:
“If Marsalek organized this for the Russians, then for the Kremlin he is ‘especially valuable’. Then he is ‘a bearer of first-class state secrets’, up to the highest level in Moscow.”
Russian media add that Marsalek used Wirecard to establish business contacts with operators of Russian online casinos and gambling sites.
Handelsblatt has seen documents showing that through a Wirecard partner in Dubai, transactions related to the gambling and pornography industries were conducted en masse.
According to the insider, Wirecard produced credit cards for various intelligence agencies, providing information about payment flows and the people behind the transactions.
“Among Marsalek’s partners were the community of American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand intelligence services, Israel’s Mossad and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), as well as Russian oligarchs,” says a trusted source.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after a meeting with German counterpart Heiko Maas on 11 August, stated that Marsalek’s activities “are not a matter of foreign-policy discussions” and that he knows nothing about the manager’s identity.
The German Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the content of confidential diplomatic talks.
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) issued a wanted notice for Jan Marsalek, but did not submit an extradition request to the Russian Federation, Handelsblatt adds.
Cooperation between Wirecard’s top management and Russian intelligence services became one of the topics at an extraordinary meeting of the Bundestag’s Finance Committee. Earlier, the Federal Intelligence Service had reported a lack of data on Wirecard AG.
“We are not witnessing the end, but the beginning of a major espionage story. Its consequences could be more noticeable than the scandal surrounding former CIA and NSA employee Edward Snowden,” writes Versiya, a newspaper close to the security services.
As noted, Wirecard, the card issuer, collapsed at the end of June after a shortfall of €1.9bn, which accounted for about a quarter of its total balance.
More on the company9;s history, which had been among Germany’s top 30 by market capitalization and proved to be a carefully masked shell, can be read in special feature ForkLog.
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