Mount Interim
About a Wirecard interim-CEO on a Swiss rose mountain
April 19, 2024 / Last edited 7 months ago
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James Freis, a finance advisor who sits on the board of directors at many companies and startups, became Wirecard's interim CEO on June 18, 2020. From 2007 until 2012, he was the Director of the US anti-money launering watchdog Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit (FinCen). He also worked at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
James Freis was called into Wirecard's headquarters on June 18, 2020, right after the supervisor board around Thomas Eichelmann forced CEO Dr. Markus Braun to resign. Freis immediately started shuffling financial scenarios and data after getting a quick overview over the company, working long hours.
While various mainstream press reports suggested that Freis was an uncompromised interim CEO, his testimony before the Wirecard court in Munich from April 2023 casted the first doubt on this image. It was James Freis who "after many discussions and talks with investors" decided to file for insolvency on June 25, 2020, only one week after his appointment - not for parts of the company, but for the entire Wirecard enterprise with many international subsidiaries. Even before his appointment, Wirecard's future insolvency administrator visited James Freis during his first days in Aschheim.
A few months into the Wirecard trial in Munich's brandnew Stadelheim prison court room, a motion for evidence was read out in March 2023. A certain company, Monterosa Services AG of Switzerland, is alleged to have been involved in siphoning off at least 340 million euros from Wirecard's bank accounts to overseas tax havens prior to its insolvency.
This Monterosa Services AG is a full subsidiary of a certain Monterosa Group. In October 2021, one and a half year after Wirecard's insolvency, James Freis became a managing director at exactly this Monterosa Group. Another half a year later, James Freis became Regulatory Technology Officer at Zurich, Switzerland based blockchain startup FQX - not FTX.
Almost all press releases regarding James Freis' appointment at Monterosa Group from October 2021 have been deleted from the internet. There are also now deleted announcements which suggest that Monterosa Services AG invested in the successor company to FQX named Obliterate around November 2023.
One month after James Freis' appointment as Managing Director at Monterosa Group, an investment round totalling $41 Millionen USD is lead by the same Monterosa Group for Asian crypto company Zipmex - the then-employer of former Wirecard whistleblower and ex Asia-Pacific senior finance advisor Pav Gill. Almost all press releases concerning this investment round into Zipmex from November 2021 have been deleted as well from the internet.
The motion for evidence from March 2023 in Munich's Wirecard court was rejected multiple times, like almost all other motions brought forward by former Wirecard CEO Dr. Braun's and ex Finance Director von Erffa's legal defences. State authorities and their representatives mostly from Munich in Germany refuse to have Monterosa's offices in Switzerland and elsewhere searched until today.
