wirecard
entry · 2020-06 · status: archived · the regulator banned short-selling and prosecuted the journalists
summary
Wirecard AG, a German payments-processing company, collapsed in June 2020 after auditors EY refused to sign off on its 2019 accounts because €1.9 billion in claimed cash deposits could not be located. The investigation that followed established that the funds had never existed. CEO Markus Braun was arrested. COO Jan Marsalek fled and remains a fugitive — subsequent reporting has linked Marsalek to Russian intelligence and pre-2020 Wirecard cooperation with German and Austrian intelligence services. Wirecard had been a member of the DAX 30 stock index — a symbol of German fintech success — with a peak market capitalization of ~€24 billion. It was the first DAX 30 company to fail.
the receipts
- The Financial Times reporting. The FT's Dan McCrum had reported skeptically on Wirecard's accounting since at least 2015, with detailed documentation of suspicious flows through Asian subsidiaries, particularly in the Philippines and Singapore. McCrum's reporting was supported by short-selling research firms and at least one whistleblower.
- The BaFin response. Germany's federal financial regulator, BaFin, did not investigate Wirecard. It did the opposite: in February 2019, BaFin banned short-selling of Wirecard stock and filed criminal complaints against the FT journalists for alleged market manipulation. This was unprecedented — BaFin had never before banned short-selling of a single stock. The journalists were vindicated; the bank was the fraud.
- The "missing" billions. €1.9 billion was claimed to be on deposit at two Philippine banks (BDO Unibank and BPI). Both banks publicly stated in June 2020 that no such accounts had ever existed. The trustee account documents were forgeries.
- Markus Braun. Arrested June 23, 2020. Trial began December 2022. Convicted June 2025 on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and accounting manipulation. Sentenced to four years and two months — significantly shorter than prosecutors had requested.
- Jan Marsalek. Disappeared June 18, 2020 — flew from Vienna to Minsk and then to Moscow. Subsequent reporting (2024-25) by Der Spiegel, the FT, Bellingcat, and others has linked Marsalek to GRU and FSB intelligence operations across Europe, including reportedly running a network in Britain that surveilled Russian dissidents. Marsalek remains a fugitive.
- BaFin reform. BaFin president Felix Hufeld was forced out in January 2021. The German parliament held a multi-year inquiry. The agency was restructured. Whether the structural mechanism that allowed it to attack the journalists rather than the company has actually been corrected is debated.
why this matters to PRIOR
Wirecard is the case study in regulator-protects-the-fraud. The Financial Times had been reporting accurate skeptical journalism on Wirecard for five years. Every signal was visible: the suspicious geographic structure, the suspect auditors at the Asian subsidiaries, the whistleblower complaints. Germany's federal financial regulator chose to attack the journalists rather than investigate the company. The journalists were right. The regulator filed criminal complaints against them. The pattern recurs whenever a fraud is intertwined with national prestige (a "German fintech champion") or intelligence-service equities (Marsalek's apparent operational role). The receipts were on the table for years. Reading them was the regulator's job. The regulator declined.
"the regulator banned short-selling and prosecuted the journalists. the journalists were right."