Internal emails: Wirecard’s millionaire deal with ÖBB

Jan Marsalek, the former Wirecard board member who has since gone into hiding, did not object to the blunt announcements. “They will always tell you that the price is too high. ÖBB has professional purchases. I am the only true source of price information and the price is NOT too high as long as I don’t come back to you with other comments, ”he wrote in an email to employees in early October 2015.

At this time, the German financial services provider had been trying to win a multi-million dollar contract for ÖBB for a year. At that time they were looking for a new provider for their electronic payment system in passenger traffic. And Wirecard wanted to offer something like that.

Five years later, Wirecard became a prime example of a house of cards on the balance sheet. The company declared bankruptcy in 2020, almost two billion euros had “disappeared”. Long-time board chairman Markus Braun resigned and is now in custody. Marsalek has been on the run for nearly a year and is wanted on an international arrest warrant. In Germany, a special commission of inquiry is handling the case. The cause caused a sensation in the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and in national domestic politics.

Contact through a public relations consultant

In 2014, however, the world was still good for Wirecard. And the ÖBB was by no means the only company to consider working with the financial services provider. Contact between Wirecard and ÖBB was established by a public relations consultant related to ÖVP from Vienna, who was friends with Georg Lauber, the then ÖBB Personenverkehr board member. In autumn 2014, the consultant organized a meeting between Lauber and Marsalek. And, as the emails indicate, at least Marsalek was impressed: “He will not be our biggest customer, but my personal favorite customer,” he says in an internal email from the former Wirecard board member.

However, the financial service provider did not put much effort into preparation. On October 2, a delegation from Lauber arrived in Bavaria for Wirecard to present the concept. On the morning of the same day, Marsalek asked in an internal email: “Do we have a presentation for today?” In the end, an old presentation was simply revamped for Deutsche Bahn.

A panda on the way to Vienna

The business visit finally came to an end at the Oktoberfest in Munich. Marsalek and an ÖBB manager then wrote a whole series of friendly emails, and even a stuffed panda was specially sent from Bavaria to the ÖBB headquarters in Vienna. The manager had forgotten the stuffed animal during the Oktoberfest field trip. And Marsalek’s assistant had even patched the animal by hand before his trip to Vienna, that is also recorded by email.

For Wirecard, the order seemed to get more and more specific. At the end of November, a Marsalek employee wrote when asked if “there was already news from ÖBB”: “Basically, ÖBB should put out to tender the acquisition. However, you want to base the tender on our responses. ” The tender finally came six months later.

Bid canceled

Wirecard was not the only applicant, and apparently not the cheapest either. A Wirecard manager wrote to Marsalek in mid-September 2015 that they had received “specific comments” from ÖBB. “In the acquisition and issuance in particular, we are significantly more expensive than our competitors.” Two weeks later, the email came from Marsaleks describing himself as “the only real source of price information.”

In fact, the ÖBB canceled the tender and started a new one. The second bidding process was later challenged by a competitor, although without success. The contract went to Wirecard. “Dear Jan (…) After a difficult process, the contract was awarded. Our cooperation can start with that. I’m already looking forward to it, “read an email from ÖBB headquarters in early November.

High contractual fine for Wirecard

But the joy did not last long. Wirecard’s systems turned out not to be as reliable as promised. The manager who sent Marsalek the stuffed panda to Vienna complained a little later in an email to Wirecard’s board of directors that “the contractual services due have not yet been rendered or have only been rendered improperly. “. In the first year, a high contractual penalty had to be paid. The collaboration remained mixed until 2019.

Reference to correct processing

However, all those involved deny that all did not go well on the road to working together. The consultant’s company, which had brought Marsalek and Lauber together, had a lawyer inform him that “in no way and at no time did he participate in the award procedure of the ÖBB to Wirecard”. A commission contract, which is mentioned in Wirecard’s internal emails, was never concluded.

The tender was processed correctly, no one knew about a consulting contract, so did the ÖBB. The “Wirecard Bank AG is working under the new owner of the ÖBB. Payment processing for our customers in ticketing goes smoothly,” says the company. The then-manager of ÖBB, Lauber, also said that he could “ rule out that this process has not been carried out objectively or in accordance with legal requirements ”.

The then head of ÖBB, Christian Kern, stated that, as CEO, he was not involved in such decisions. He was “informed of the result as part of the project for the new ticketing system. Met with Braun several times, Marsalek never.” But if you now pretend that Wirecard only works with criminals and scammers, you are not doing justice to this company, “said Kern, who in 2016 went from the top of the ÖBB as federal chancellor and head of the SPÖ to politics. And the “The fact that the bosses have been criminals does not mean that the product is not good,” said the former head of the ÖBB.