Where Has Wirecard Billionaire Fugitive Jan Marsalek Disappeared To?
For your average Chief Operating Officer, a lifetime spent living in the shadows on assumed identities and looking over one’s shoulder might seem a fate considerably worse than a spell in a German jail.
But Jan Marsalek, 40, was never an average COO. The high-living former COO of Wirecard, a German payments processing behemoth that collapsed in June amidst allegations of a staggering $2.25 billion fraud, is now thought to be living under a false identity in the former USSR.
Interpol say Marsalek, who is Austrian by birth, is wanted for violation of German securities trading acts, criminal breach of trust, and an “especially serious case of fraud.” Three of his erstwhile executive colleagues are languishing in German jails accused of fraud, embezzlement, and market manipulation, while a fourth was released on bail this week.