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It’s the most spectacular leak in years, and yet it was still unclear when and how Jan Marsalek, a former board member of insolvent payment service provider Wirecard, left Germany. Research the Süddeutsche Zeitung now show that Marsalek booked a private jet from an Innsbruck charter company and flew from Vöslau-Kottingbrunn airport near Vienna to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on the night of June 19. There he loses the track after the two-hour flight at 11 pm local time. Marsalek is said to have paid the flight costs of around 8,000 euros in cash.
There are some indications that Marsalek traveled from Minsk to Russia. The manager reportedly had good contacts with former members of the Russian military and intelligence officers.
So far it has been reported time and again that Marsalek fled on June 18 after the board of directors granted him a leave of absence at Wirecard’s headquarters in Aschheim that afternoon. However, Marsalek met with his confidants that night at an Italian restaurant in central Munich. Among other things, with a former head of Austria’s internal secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight Against Terrorism (BVT). Until four years ago, the former spy headed Department 2 of the intelligence service, where he was responsible for the areas of extremism, terrorism, counterintelligence, proliferation, sanctions violations and illegal trade in war material. The former agent is said to have worked on Wirecard projects together with Marsalek after leaving authority. The lawyer for the former BVT official declined to comment on specific issues, including whether it would help Marsalek in his subsequent escape.
Meanwhile, the audit firm EY, responsible for Wirecard, is facing increasing difficulties. In April 2020, competitor KPMG published the results of a special audit, which finally helped uncover the years of fraud at Wirecard. As it turns out, more results were given to the supervisory board and board of directors in a so-called information tape. In this appendix, which is available to the SZ, KPMG auditors report on an EY employee who reportedly warned as early as 2016 that Wirecard executives could be involved in fraud and that there should have been a bribery attempt .
These allegations were serious and led to a forensic investigation called “Project Ring,” which, according to KPMG, was prematurely terminated in 2018 by the now volatile former board member Marsalek. At that time there was no final report. The results of the investigation were also not taken sufficiently into account in the 2017 annual financial statements. EY denies the allegations that everything was properly documented at the time.
