Jan Marsalek

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Wanted poster of the Munich police headquarters

Jan Marsalek (also Maršálek ; born March 15, 1980 in Vienna ) is an Austrian manager and former board member of Wirecard AG. He has been on the run from the German law enforcement authorities since June 2020 and is wanted with an international arrest warrant . He is considered the main suspect of falsifying accounts at Wirecard AG in the amount of at least 1.9 billion euros.

biography

According to his own account, Marsalek attended the French grammar school in Vienna; the Lycée Français de Vienne , which may be meant by this, has not yet confirmed this information (as of July 17, 2020). Later he switched to the Bundesgymnasium and Bundesrealgymnasium Klosterneuburg , which he left shortly before taking his Matura without leaving school. At the age of 19, he founded a software company for electronic commerce applications . He started his career at Wire Card in 2000 . He was recruited by the then CEO and founder of the company because he was familiar with the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). On February 1, 2010, he became Chief Operating Officer and member of the Board of Management of the new Wirecard AG, which has now been created through a back door listing . His Management Board salary at Wirecard was most recently 2.7 million euros a year . His fortune is estimated at a three-digit million amount. Unlike CEO Markus Braun , this included hardly any Wirecard shares, only in February 2019 he bought shares for 110,000 euros.

Marsalek last lived in Munich . He has a brother who is twelve years his junior. His parents divorced around 2010.

Wirecard and allegations of fraud

In March 2019, the Financial Times reported suspicious transactions in Singapore with a total volume of two million euros that Marsalek is said to have known about. On June 18, 2020, Wirecard had to admit that it had no evidence of 1.9 billion euros. Marsalek was released immediately and discharged without notice a few days later. As a result, Wirecard had to file for bankruptcy. Marsalek is considered to be one of the main culprits.

Intelligence contacts

Marsalek are said to have had contacts with secret services . The former FPÖ top politician Johann Gudenus is said to have been supplied with confidential information from the Austrian security authorities by Marsalek. In the summer of 2018, Gudenus gave Marsalek an appointment in the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, which was then led by the FPÖ .

Marsalek was known to people close to the Russian military intelligence service GRU . Research by Bellingcat and Spiegel suggests that the Russian domestic secret service FSB monitored him from 2015 and saved his travel movements and booking data. In 2016, the FSB stopped the storage, Marsalek also traveled to Russia afterwards. Marsalek had four highly confidential documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about the attack on Sergei Viktorovich Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 .

Attempted purchase of spy software

In November 2013 Marsalek is said to have tried to acquire spyware from the Italian company HackingTeam , which, according to its own statements, sells it exclusively to government agencies. At the end of October 2013, he was named in a letter to the company as representative of the island state of Grenada , expressing interest in purchasing the HackingTeam spyware and requesting a product demonstration. The letter appears to be printed on official Grenada stationery and bears the signature of the then Grenadian Foreign Minister Nickolas Steele . Opposite the mirror confirmed Steele and did not produce a business meeting with Marsalek in the summer of 2013, which had gone to Wirecard technology for payment processing. Steele denied the authenticity of the letter to HackingTeam, as did the managing director of the Mexican company Encryptech, known as the middleman. In July 2013, Internet domains with officially appearing names were registered in the name of Jan Marsalek , including stateofgrenada.org, which led to servers in Germany. The former head of HackingTeam stated that, to the best of his knowledge, there had been no meeting with Marsalek or representatives of Grenada. However, internal emails verified by a former HackingTeam employee suggest that a spyware demonstration was held for Marsalek on November 27, 2013. According to the boss of the HackingTeam successor company Memento Labs and two other former HackingTeam employees, however, no contract was signed between HackingTeam and Grenada or Marsalek.

Escape

Marsalek is wanted with an international arrest warrant. He is accused of market manipulation , falsification of accounts and infidelity . He is said to have transferred considerable sums of money from Dubai to Russia in the form of bitcoins . On June 18, 2020 Marsalek was Wirecard exempted . That day his colleagues saw him for the last time, then he went underground.

According to Spiegel , Marsalek first entered Belarus with a false passport . According to the investigative platform Bellingcat , Marsalek flew from Klagenfurt via Tallinn to Minsk on the day he was released from Wirecard in mid-June . Because of the political conflict between Russia and Belarus (Belarus) it was too risky for the Russian military intelligence service GRU to leave Marsalek in the neighboring country. That's why he was taken to Russia. The Handelsblatt reported, citing business, judicial and diplomatic circles, that Marsalek was housed on an estate west of Moscow under the supervision of the Russian military intelligence service.

At first it was speculated that Marsalek was in the Philippines . His alleged entry into the Philippines on June 23, 2020 and his departure to China on June 24, 2020 turned out to be bogus: On July 4, the Philippine Justice Minister Guevarra stated that officials from the Philippine immigration service had falsified Marsalek's data. On August 12, 2020, the public was asked unsolved to help with the search for Marsalek via file number XY ...

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christoph Giesen, Klaus Ott , Nicolas Richter , Jörg Schmitt , Jan Willmroth, Nils Wischmeyer: Catch me if you can , sueddeutsche.de, July 2, 2020
  2. ^ A b c Bernhard Ecker, Martina Bachler: Jan Maršálek - The most wanted Austrian in the world . In: Trend . No. 29/2020 , July 17, 2020 ( trend.at [accessed July 26, 2020]).
  3. ↑ a b Tim Bartz, Sven Becker, Rafael Buschmann et al .: On the hunt for Dr. No . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 2020 ( online ).
  4. ^ Jan Marsalek Net Worth . In: Wallmine. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
  5. ^ Kas: Jan Marsalek: parties and fraud - the bizarre life of the Wirecard ex-board member. In: Focus Online . July 6, 2020, accessed July 6, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Dan McCrum: Wirecard boss tells staff accounting allegations known and adressed , ft.com , March 22, 2019
  7. ↑ Christoph Giesen, Klaus Ott , Nicolas Richter , Jörg Schmitt , Jan Willmroth, Nils Wischmeyer: Where is Jan Marsalek , sueddeutsche.de, July 5, 2020
  8. ↑ Klaus Ott , Nils Wischmeyer: Investigators search Wirecard offices , sueddeutsche.de, July 1, 2020
  9. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung July 11, 2020: His name is Marsalek, Jan Marsalek
  10. ^ A b Anna Thalhammer: Fleeting Wirecard manager was a secret FPÖ informant. In: DiePresse.com. July 9, 2020, accessed July 11, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Frederik Obermaier, Christoph Giesen, Oliver Das Gupta: Marsalek: A man who can be expected to do almost anything. In: sueddeutsche.de. July 10, 2020, accessed on July 13, 2020 .
  12. ^ Marsalek apparently submerged in Belarus. Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  13. ^ Paul Murphy, Dan McCrum, Helen Warrell: Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek touted Russian nerve gas documents. In: Financial Times . July 9, 2020, accessed on July 23, 2020 .
  14. ^ Max Hoppenstedt, Marcel Rosenbach, Nicola Naber, Roman Höfner: Marsalek apparently initiated the purchase of spy software. In: Der Spiegel . July 21, 2020, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai: 'World's Most Wanted Man' Involved in Bizarre Attempt to Buy Hacking Tools. In: Motherboard . July 21, 2020, accessed on July 21, 2020 .
  16. ^ A b Ex-Wirecard manager Marsalek allegedly in Moscow . In: Tagesschau , July 20, 2020.
  17. ↑ a b Marsalek apparently submerged in Belarus. Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  18. ^ A b Fidelius Schmid, Christo Grozev: Wirecard manager Marsalek apparently fled to Belarus. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  19. ↑ World's Most Wanted Man Jan Marsalek Located in Belarus; Data Points to Russian Intel Links . Bellingcat, July 18, 2020.
  20. ↑ Ex-Wirecard board member Marsalek went into hiding in Russia . In: Handelsblatt , July 19, 2020.
  21. ↑ Solveig Bach: Where is ex-Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek? In: Capital. July 7, 2020, accessed July 7, 2020 .
  22. ↑ File number XY ... unsolved from August 12, 2020. ZDF , August 12, 2020, accessed on August 12, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Marsalek, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maršálek, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian manager
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna