MANILA – Philippine investigators have lodged criminal complaints against a former executive of collapsed German payments firm Wirecard and others for alleged fraud and cybercrime offences, said the justice secretary today.
Wirecard was a rising star in the fintech sector until it filed for bankruptcy last year after admitting that €1.9 billion (RM9.53 billion) was missing from its accounts.
The money was supposedly held in trust in two Philippine lenders to cover trading risks carried out by third parties on Wirecard’s behalf.
But in June last year, long-time auditors Ernst & Young said it was unable to find it, forcing the company to admit that the money did not exist.
The Philippine central bank has said the money never entered the country’s financial system.
The National Investigation Bureau lodged complaints on May 31 against the firm’s former chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, as well as a Manila lawyer and bank employees, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told AFP.
He said state prosecutors are conducting a preliminary investigation, which will determine if charges are filed.
Marsalek, who remains at large after failing to turn himself in to German investigators, was responsible for Wirecard’s Asia business, which became the focus of accounting irregularities.
The implosion, which has drawn comparisons with the Enron accounting scandal in the United States in the early 2000s, has been described as “unparalleled” in Germany by Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.
The company’s former CEO, Markus Braun, and several other top executives have been arrested on fraud and money-laundering charges over the massive scam. – AFP, June 7, 2021
