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Report of a so-called shortseller,
who for security reasons would not like to be named
Research back then (2010) showed
that the insolvent payment service provider from Aschheim illegally postponed
sales from the gaming industry, earned 3 digit millions of euros on porn
websites, supported tax evasion to a very large extent (with the help of a hole
in the credit card processing processes and the Wirecard Invention of the first
virtual credit card) and laundering.
In 2010, the public prosecutor and
financial market regulator Bafin were contacted. The
prosecutor suspended the Wirecard investigation two years later due to lack of
evidence.
Why?
Were there higher
(money) interests involved?
Did some "celebrities"
get cold feet?
It all came
back up on the day of Wirecard's bankruptcy.
Before, no one would have believed that
Wirecard would defraud billions. Now
you listen. Almost all media
believed the fairy tale told by Wirecard about the evil shortseller that spreads
untrue rumors and thus manipulates courses. Shortsellers
were labeled as fraudsters, but Wirecard was protected against them.
As early as
2008, Wirecard was apparently not doing the right thing.
The analysis of the annual financial
statements and the subsidiaries before 2008 revealed astonishing results. The
Wirecard Group generated two thirds of its sales in Germany, but posted losses
there. The profits came from
Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands. Gambling
providers are typically located there. In
addition, Wirecard's margins were up to ten times higher than those of its
competitors. That was strange.
The weak cash flow
was inflated, Wirecard's competitors and partners only had one explanation, it
was clear that fraud was at stake here.
At the end of 2008,
on the verge of a Wirecard party at the Munich Oktoberfest, confirmation that
Wirecard was doing illegal business.
Almost the entire payment industry knew
this, said Wirecard's American business partners. They
drank champagne and enjoyed themselves that nobody in Germany seemed to know
about the illegal practices. They
were surprised that no one suspected anything, even though Wirecard was already
on the stock exchange at the time.
Although you
already knew that at the time - why was it only in 2010 that the prosecutor
filed a complaint about money laundering?
Solid evidence was needed. In
spring 2010, an informant from the payment industry came out unexpectedly.
He reported that
Wirecard had to pay Mastercard fines of over 16 million euros for unauthorized
re-encoding of credit card payments in the area of online gambling.
A payment request has recently been
received by Wirecard. After that,
it was believed that there was enough evidence. Criminal
complaints about money laundering were filed with the Munich public prosecutor's
office (the same one that is being investigated today) by email. Nothing
happened for a month. The criminal
complaint was filed again, this time in paper form and by post.
Shortly
afterwards, Wirecard was also reported for market manipulation by the Bafin and
the public prosecutor. What happened to this ad?
To date, it is not
known whether the Bafin has even followed up on the criminal complaint.
The public
prosecutor's office keeps all files under lock and key, the easiest way to keep
out of the affair.
How do you explain
that fraud has not been noticed over the years?
It is still inexplicable that the public
prosecutor's office closed the investigation into money laundering that started
in 2010 in 2012. The lawsuit was
well-founded, including a detailed explanation of how to circumvent US gambling
laws using the flower shops.
A second alleged letter from Mastercard,
which was found on the Internet, also raised suspicions that payments had been
illegally transcoded. But
the prosecutor never checked whether the Mastercard letter was authentic. It
would be a pleasure to inspect the investigation files: What exactly did the
prosecutor do at the time? Why
hasn't the alleged fraud been exposed?
Shouldn't
big investors have noticed something later? How did Wirecard get into the Dax?
The Dax climb should never have happened. In
terms of content, hardly anyone in Germany has dealt with the allegations. Neither
authorities nor analysts have adequately investigated these. Instead,
Wirecard critics have always been rigorously smashed.
A witness
(shortseller) received an uninvited visit from three men in his office, who
threatened him massively and demanded that he immediately close his short
position.
Wirecard has defamed the statements of
shortsellers as lies for years. That
was apparently enough to convince the authorities. But
it is also a fact: banks, funds, analysts and auditors make sales by investing
their customers' money in listed companies or advising companies. Bankruptcy
like Wirecard means zero sales. Nobody
likes to saw off the branch on which they are sitting.
Could someone have
sponsored the company?
You do not know
whether someone has a protective hand over the company in the background, but
today you cannot rule it out when it comes to Wirecard.
Shortseller
has been the loser for years against Wirecard. How did Wirecard proceed?
You do not know whether others have also
had an uninvited visit. However,
Wirecard hired lawyers, forensic experts, data specialists and experts with the
aim of portraying critics as liars and course manipulators.
Wirecard also filed criminal charges in
2008 for course manipulation against shortsellers. Representatives
of the company then had a lively exchange with the prosecutors who were
investigating shortsellers. Once
they submitted a detailed crime plan to the public prosecutor's office, which
they allegedly received anonymously. In
it, people who demonstrably do not know each other plan to target the stock
price. Even the public prosecutor
suspected that this could be a fake.
Wirecard got away with it anyway. Shortsellers
were also spied on in 2015. Others
also report such methods. Wirecard
must have built the right machinery.
A machine that was mainly served by dark
shops from Eastern Europe, with call centers and dubious companies. Even
today, these types of people threaten insider knowledge.
There are many reservations about
shortsellers. Among other things,
that they benefit from the failure of companies. Why
do these short sellers think important for the capital market?
There is nobody who analyzes companies
more critically than a shortseller. Journalists
don't either, Dan McCrum of the Financial Times (FT) is an absolute exception. The
reason is money. It is a lot of
work to uncover fraud. There is no
wage for that and for FT the Wirecard story will probably never pay off
financially.
For example, Thielert AG's balance sheet
fraud was uncovered in 2008. The
CEO had manipulated his profits upwards for years with fictitious invoices -
without the auditor wanting to have noticed anything. Shortsellers
made a profit from it, then it was revealed.
Many consider
this to be immoral.
It is immoral if, as at Wirecard, a share
price is artificially driven up by balance sheet fraud and illegal sales. The
task as a shortseller is to uncover such machinations. Sure,
then the price drops and the shortseller makes a profit.
But how can it be immoral to uncover a
scam? Shortsellers thus protect
investors from even greater losses. In
spring 2010, Wirecard's market value was just over a billion euros. Had
the fraud been exposed at that time, a market value of more than 20 billion
euros would never have been reached and investors would not have made such
immense losses overall.
It is, of course, immoral and criminal if
false rumors are spread to affect stock prices. However,
this rarely happens in practice: untruths can quickly be invalidated by the
company. Even if the allegations
are correct, companies have the opportunity to correct mistakes without
suffering much damage. In the USA
or Great Britain, unlike Germany, the stock analyzes and assessments of short
sellers receive a lot of attention.
Shortseller
error?
Using a simple Google search, stock
analyzes and buy recommendations for other stock market letters can still be
found that were published at the same time and were not included in the Bafin
report on behalf of the public prosecutor at the time. These
publications are likely to have had an impact on the course. The
reports should also have other influences and exclude reports from stock market
letters. In addition, ad-hoc
announcements from companies or investor conferences were ignored. In
one case, the assessors took the opening price on the right day, but the closing
price on the day after that. In
fact, the price demonstrably fell on that day by 4.41 percent - despite the buy
recommendation of the stock market letter.
What did
that mean for Wirecard?
Back then, Wirecard learned how easy it
is to silence critics with the help of the authorities. Finally,
Wirecard had the authorities under control so well that, according to further
reports from the FT about massive inconsistencies in Wirecard businesses in
Asia, the beginning of 2019 even banned shortsellers because of the risk of
price manipulation - instead of simply following up on the information.
Kremlin is
unsuspecting at the main accused of Marsalek. But Marsalek did not act alone, it
is a whole criminal band that was and probably is still here.
Former sales manager Jan Marsalek is
considered a key figure in the Wirecard fraud scandal. The
problem: The Austrian manager disappeared without a trace. A
media report suggests that he is in the care of the Russian secret service. The
Kremlin reportedly knows nothing.
In the Wirecard fraud scandal, the former
head of sales, who disappeared without a trace, may have gone underground in
Russia, according to a media report. But
the Kremlin says it knows nothing.
"No, nothing is known," said Kremlin
spokesman Dmitri Peskow to a report in the "Handelsblatt", according to which
the Austrian manager Jan Marsalek is said to have fled to Russia. The
Russian authorities are not pursuing Marsalek.
Accordingly, there is neither a criminal
case against the manager in Russia nor an extradition request. Russia
also has no information about its whereabouts.
Marsalek, born in 1980, is the key figure
in the Wirecard affair. Until the
manager was fired without notice in June, he was responsible for day-to-day
business at the financial services provider worldwide. He
was originally suspected in the Philippines, and according to the Philippine
government, he is married there - something the colleagues at the Aschheim
headquarters were not aware of. The
government in Manila later admitted that the data on entry and exit in the
national immigration authority's computer system was falsified. According
to various - all unconfirmed - media reports, Marsalek is said to have contacts
with Russian secret services.
Federal
government is silent
There was no official information about
Marsalek's whereabouts on Monday from the German or Austrian side. At
the federal press conference, a spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office merely
stated that the media reports had been noted and were not commenting on
speculation or ongoing investigations.
The Dax group from the Munich suburb of
Aschheim initially granted presumed air bookings totaling an estimated 1.9
billion euros in June and then filed for bankruptcy. The
alleged bogus transactions largely ran through alleged subcontractors in the
Middle East and Southeast
Asia (see Wirecard-news.com). Wirecard's core
business was the processing of card payments as a link between credit card
companies and retailers.
Today, the Munich
public prosecutor's office has been covering himself over all the years when it
was suspected that Wirecard was not doing the right thing.
Does the question
remain open ... yes, which question?
"Unique
business thriller " ,
Wirecard scandal soon as a feature film?
Guttenberg advertised with
Merkel - Chancellery apparently
helped Wirecard in China.
"One has to be guilty," Wirecard
chat logs popped up….
All this and more at http://wirecard-news.com
an ISAAN News presentation
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