By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 8 minutes ago, just updated
The Austrian Jan Marsalek has been on the run since June 2020. HANDOUT/AFP
Jan Marsalek was wanted by Interpol and has not been found since leaving Germany in June 2020. He is said to be in Moscow under a false identity and is being protected by Russian secret services.
The Austrian Jan Marsalek, who has been on the run since June 2020 and is a key player in the huge financial scandal that led the German company Wirecard into bankruptcy, has broken his silence, as we learned from a court source on Tuesday. The Munich court, which has been ruling on those allegedly responsible for this blatant fraud since December 8, has received a letter from Jan Marsalek’s lawyer, a court spokesman told AFP, confirming an article in the German weekly Wirtschaftswoche.
“Germany’s biggest financial scandal”
The court spokesman did not provide any information about the content of the letter. Contacted by AFP, Jan Marsalek’s lawyer Frank Eckstein said laconically: “We spoke about different facets (of the case, ed.) and about different people.” A sulfurous and mysterious character, Jan Marsalek, 43, is reported by Interpol wanted and not found since his hasty departure from Germany in June 2020. He is said to be in Moscow under a false identity, protected by the secret services. Russians, according to an international journalistic survey published in 2022.
According to the weekly newspaper “Wirtschaftswoche”, Jan Marsalek, who acted as operations manager at Wirecard, did not comment specifically on the allegations made against him in the letter addressed to the court. Former Wirecard boss Markus Braun and other suspected officials have been facing a criminal court in Munich since December last year over Germany’s biggest financial scandal, which led to the bankruptcy of payments company Wirecard Online in 2020. Hearings on this flow process are scheduled to last until at least 2024.
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Wirecard, a flagship of digital finance that has risen to the ranks of the Dax index, which unites Germany’s stock market elite, collapsed in June 2020 when its executives conceded 1.9 billion euros in assets, a quarter the size of its balance sheet , actually did not exist. The then Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, now Chancellor, acknowledged that this bankruptcy represented “the biggest financial scandal” that the country had ever experienced.