On Tuesday, prosecutors announced that two additional former high-ranking executives have been charged in connection with the significant collapse of the German payment company Wirecard due to a massive accounting fraud. Alexander von Knoop, the former chief financial officer, and Susanne Steidl, the ex-head of product development, are accused of embezzlement related to the scandal.
The Munich prosecutor's office stated that "the two defendants each violated their duties to Wirecard in a clear and severe manner." These actions resulted in the company suffering "losses of several hundred million euros," according to the statement. The decision on whether they will stand trial will be made by a court in Munich, where Wirecard was headquartered.
Wirecard, once a celebrated company, fell apart in June 2020 after it was compelled to acknowledge that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) supposedly held in trustee accounts in Asia did not exist. Several high-ranking individuals from the company, including the former CEO Markus Braun, are currently on trial over this scandal. Von Knoop and Steidl allegedly failed to prevent approximately 40 million euros from being transferred to a Singapore-based company named Ruprecht in 2019. They followed a "meaningless proposal" from fellow Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek without thorough investigation, as per the indictment. The money subsequently vanished.
Marsalek, a figure with connections to foreign intelligence services, is a central figure in the scandal but escaped arrest post-collapse and is still at large. Additionally, the pair is accused of granting a substantial loan to another Singapore-based company, OCAP, intended to transfer funds to merchants in relation to credit card transactions. They approved this loan based on "inconsistent and unsubstantiated verbal information," according to prosecutors. In 2019, OCAP received an additional 100 million euros from Wirecard despite already being in debt. Importantly, Wirecard's supervisory board was not involved in that decision, as per the indictment.
