A Munich Fraud
Wirecard and Munich's Public Prosecutor's Office
May 5, 2021 / Last edited 2 months ago
In 2002, Wirecard founder Hoppenrath issued a criminal referral at Munich's public prosecutor's office because of intellectual property theft. He suspected that company insiders were responsible for the robbery of important laptops belonging to Marsalek and Braun. This criminal referral led to no indictments.
In 2008, Wallstreet-Online blogger 'memyselfandi007' reported about suspicious financial irregularities at Wirecard, leading the company to file a criminal referral with Munich public prosecutor's office which then indicted members of Germany's Shareholder Protection Agency (SdK) instead of investigating fraud at Wirecard.
In 2010, Munich state attorneys investigated Wirecard relating to a money laundering case in Florida (GoMoPa) in which Wirecard's UK subsidiary was part of. The investigations had no impact on Wirecard UK's obvious involvement in the matter.
In 2015, Munich's police department began investigating Wirecard for engagement in illegal gambling activities through their Click2Pay service. A Munich state attorney closed the case, stating there was "no foundation for investigating" Wirecard.
In 2016, Munich's public prosecutors initiated criminal investigations against the originators of the Zatarra report, which detailed massive financial fraud surrounding Wirecard's takeover of India-based 'GI Retail' and 'Hermes I-Tickets'. Two years later, the publishers of the Zatarra report were fined in 2018 by prosecutors from Munich.
In early 2019, Germany's banking regulatory authority BaFin issued a short seller ban for Wirecard shares for 8 weeks. At the same time, Munich's public prosecutors initiated criminal investigations not into Wirecard, but against investigative Financial Times journalists for truthfully reporting about Wirecard's financial fraud.
As early as 2008, credit card provider MasterCard fined Wirecard for $10 million over processing gambling transactions under the wrong codes. Two years later, MasterCard warned Wirecard's banking unit again. In early 2019, Commerzbank passed 343 potential money laundering transactions at Wirecard to Germany's FIU authority, which forwarded some to Munich's public prosecutors as well.
In early February 2019, police in Singapore raided Wirecard's Asia-Pacific offices. Two weeks later, Wirecard's lawyers handed over a dubious affidavit to Munich's public prosecutors, stating that the Financial Times had allegedly offered Bloomerg News 6 million euros to run with their "story." The affadavit was forwarded by Munich state attorneys to financial supervisory authority BaFin, and explained at length in a phone conversation.
In early 2020, Munich's public prosecutors met with local tax authority personnel who presented details about Wirecard's financial fraud. The public prosecutors once again refused to initiate investigations into the company.
At the center of Wirecard's fraud appears the financial audit company Ernst & Young (EY), which signed off Wirecard's financial audits too easily from 2015 on. EY refused to testify the 2019 balance sheets only at the beginning of 2020. Munich's public prosecutor's office would not begin their investigations specifically targeted at EY until December 2020, around 6 months after 1.9 billion Euros were found to be unaccounted for.
