Jan Marsalek, the former Wirecard chief operating officer who went missing after his alleged trip to the Philippines last month to pursue the missing 2 billion euros on the company’s books, is in Belarus.
Marsalek reportedly entered the Philippines through Manila before flying to Cebu City and then to China in June. Philippine authorities said there were no images of Marsalek arriving in the city, nor were there records of a flight leaving Cebu for China.
Forged travel tracks
According to the investigative reporting website Bellingcat, the former Wirecard executive’s trip to the Philippines was falsified. Investigations have signaled the involvement of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, to help him disappear into thin air by altering Marsalek’s travel information. He explained that:
“The FSB has complete control over the Russian border service and, therefore, over the centralized database of the border between Russia and Belarus. Therefore, any data manipulation should be done at the behest of the FSB, or at least with the consent of the FSB. If this happened, this would indicate a direct collaboration between Jan Marsalek and the FSB … “
The FSB allegedly began monitoring Marsalek’s international travel in early 2015 and had stopped tracking its movement in late 2018. He was found using several different passports, including a diplomatic passport from a third country. Russian FSB immigration data suggests that the Russian security service had a long-standing interest in Marsalek. He was also a frequent visitor to the country.
Since the Philippine authorities believed that his immigration records to the country were falsified, it was assumed that Marsalek hid in a different country. Based on the Bellingcat investigation, Marsalek told a colleague that he is in a country where “the same people have been in power for the past 25 years.” The researchers hypothesized that with Russia’s interest in Marsalek, it could be in a country with the same president for the past 25 years. Russia and Belarus share an external border. Bellingcat’s data showed that he flew to Belarus on June 19 and did not leave the country after that.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, Jan Marsalek boasted of having ties to the Russian intelligence services and promoted secret documents on chemical weapons used in the UK.
