Wirecard offices raided by Munich prosecutors over missing €1.9bn
Wirecard offices in Germany and two locations in Austria have been raided by German prosecutors investigating the missing €1.9bn from its accounts.
A spokesperson for the Munich authority said 12 prosecutors and 33 police officers are conducting searches, according to Bloomberg reports.
In June, police searched Wirecard’s offices after prosecutors launched an investigation into former chief Markus Braun and three of the firm’s executive board members.
The collapse of the German payment processing firm accelerated after it announced that €1.9bn was missing from its accounts.
Braun resigned and was subsequently arrested on suspicion of market manipulation and false accounting. Wirecard later acknowledged the scale of the fraud, warning the missing cash probably does “not exist”.
Its auditor EY said there were “clear indications that this was an elaborate and sophisticated fraud”. On 25 June, Wirecard filed for insolvency, becoming the first member of Germany’s Dax index to fail.
The scandal has so far focused on the firm’s German operation, as well as the role of auditor EY. However, Wirecard’s UK subsidiary but there are growing questions about the group’s activities here.
Senior Wirecard staff have been linked to a network of British companies associated with alleged money laundering, according to a Times report today
Employees were reportedly shareholders in a “company creation operation” in Consett, County Durham, which was shut down after an investigation by the government.
The Times has reported that corporate filings reveal the involvement of Wirecard staff in a network of shell companies which were connected to pornography, gambling and dating websites.
Residents of Consett were reportedly paid to be directors of hundreds of businesses by Brinken Merchant Incorporations (BMI), run by local entrepreneur Simon Dowson.
Among BMI shareholders are reportedly former Wirecard sales executive Patrick Mosbach, and executive vice-president of digital sales at Wirecard.
Dowson told the Times that Wirecard staff had referred third party clients to BMI, but he had no involvement with or knowledge of the resulting shell companies’ activities.