German prosecutors have blamed Marsalek, a former Wirecard’s second-in-command, for the € 3.2 billion fraud that rocked the country’s political and economic establishment. The digital payment company, long hailed as one of Germany’s few technology success stories, collapsed into insolvency in June 2020, shortly after revealing that half of its revenue and € 1.9 billion in corporate cash were non-existent. Marsalek’s meeting with the German spy agency BND was suggested in March 2021 by a businessman, according to people who were informed about the matter. But the idea was rejected by senior BND executives in Berlin, who believed the businessman may have been an informal FSB partner. Marsalek, who was a close confidant of Markus Braun, chief executive officer and head of fraudulent operations, escaped shortly before Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in June 2020. Austrian police found Marsalek in June 2020 in a private jet at a small airport south of Vienna and flew to the Belarusian capital Minsk, where they lost track of the Austrian citizen. Brown, who is being held in police custody in Augsburg, was charged last month with fraud, breach of trust, fraudulent accounts and market manipulation. German prosecutors and the BND are now certain that Marsalek, now 42, is hiding in Moscow, according to people familiar with the matter. Marsalek was a person interested in three Western intelligence services, which examined his relationships with individuals or networks linked to Russia’s military intelligence directorate, the GRU, the FT revealed in 2020. The German prosecutors, who placed him on the list of most wanted by Interpol, submitted in 2020 an application for the extradition of Marsalek to the Russian law enforcement authorities. They replied that they lacked an address for Marsalek and had no trace of him entering the country. In March 2021, during the German parliamentary inquiry into the scandal, the Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted that it was “confused by allegations of close links between Wirecard CEO Jan Marsalek and Russian security services” and urged Berlin “to stop politicizing this issue.”

At the same time, however, the BND’s representative at the German embassy in Moscow was approached by a businessman who suggested meeting with Marsalek, according to sources familiar with the matter. While the businessman had no official role with the Russian secret services, the German BND saw him as an informal FSB collaborator, people who were informed about the matter said. Fearing that the Russian intelligence service might try to set a trap to embarrass German intelligence personnel, the meeting was ousted by senior BND officials in Berlin, according to one of the people, adding that Angela Merkel’s chancellor had been informed. then on the subject. The information was not passed to the Munich criminal prosecutors, the person added. “You have to keep in mind that this is the same secret service that poisoned me [Alexei] “Navalny,” another person familiar with BND’s decision-making told FT. This week, after the German newspaper Bild Zeitung reported on the offer to meet Marsalek in Moscow, Munich prosecutors met with BND staff in Berlin and were briefed on the matter. The Bild newspaper reported that the German government knew Marsalek’s exact location in Moscow. Bruno Kahl, BND’s boss, was vague when answering questions from lawmakers about Marsalek’s whereabouts during the parliamentary inquiry into Wirecard. However, a person familiar with the matter denied this detail of Bild’s report, adding that BND had only “one case” for Marsalek’s exact address. “The new revelations raise some serious questions whether the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee was led to the garden path. [by the BND]Said Jens Zimmermann, a Social Democrat lawmaker and former member of the committee of inquiry. The BND, Munich prosecutors and a Marsalek lawyer declined to comment.