A senior executive at the disgraced payments company Wirecard is believed to be hiding near Moscow under the protection of Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, the German newspaper Handelsblatt. reported Sunday.
Wire card it collapsed in June after admitting there was probably no 1.9 billion euros ($ 2.2 billion) in its accounts, in what auditors said appeared to be “elaborate and sophisticated fraud. “German authorities arrested their former CEO and former chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, 40, fleeing as many as three Western intelligence agencies.
Marsalek is believed to be under GRU supervision at a property west of Moscow, Handelsblatt said, citing unidentified commercial, judicial and diplomatic sources.
German news magazine Der Spiegel, research website Bellingcat and Russian news website The Insider reported this weekend that Marsalek fled to Belarus via Estonia hours after his dismissal on June 18. Belarus and Russia have had virtually no border control since 1995.
Handelsblatt wrote that current political tensions between Belarus and Russia made it “too risky” for the GRU to leave Marsalek in Minsk.
Marsalek “was often characterized as a secret agent” in private conversations and “must have worked closely with the GRU” during his visits to war-torn Syria and when making investments in Libya, Handelsblatt reported.
The Bellingcat investigation said the Austrian citizen made more than 60 trips to Russia in the past decade.
Wirecard had been a rising star on the Frankfurt stock exchange until reports from the Financial Times and other media disputed their business and accounting practices.
The Kremlin said Monday that it was unconscious Marsalek’s whereabouts.
AFP contributed reporting to this article.
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