Wirecard carried millions in plastic bags
What the Financial Times revealed about the German fintech scandal Wirecard. The article by Giuseppe Liturri
The former employee of Wirecard said that part of the sums withdrawn were intended for a businessman convicted in the US
[Taken from the Financial Times ]
Jan Marsalek's former personal assistant revealed that he helped carry out large cash withdrawals for Wirecard Bank customers using plastic grocery bags. The recipients also included the name of a businessman at this time struggling with serious legal problems in the United States.
Sabine Heinzinger, Marsalek's former assistant, said she played a crucial role in two cash withdrawals of € 200,000 and € 300,000 respectively, organized by Wirecard's senior managers, including Marsalek, the group's former CEO and now a fugitive.
The former assistant justified herself by stating that she did not consider the withdrawals suspicious as they are always accompanied by a large amount of documents signed by "several senior employees".
Nonetheless, Heinzinger admitted his surprise that the banknotes had been transported in plastic bags. "I was expecting a more professional method, but that's how I got the money," he said late Thursday at the last hearing of the parliamentary commission investigating the collapse of the payment group.
The testimony of Sabine Heinzinger, who worked for Marsalek for seven years until the implosion of Wirecard, is the first public reference to the affair of cash withdrawals since the Financial Times reported the incident last month.
The practice had started as early as 2012, when six-figure amounts were often carried in banknotes in Aldi and Lidl plastic bags, as reported to the police by some former employees. The total amount, the current location of the money and the reason for removing it from the building have not been clarified.
Marsalek's former assistant was one of several witnesses in a 15-hour hearing that took place on Friday morning. The committee has been scrutinizing the Wirecard affair for months, which collapsed in June 2020 following one of the largest German-branded corporate frauds in decades.
Heinzinger pointed out that he only learned of the fraud in June last year, shortly before Wirecard revealed that the Philippines was missing € 1.9 billion in corporate cash, adding that he initially thought it was a "misunderstanding" that could be resolved. quickly.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/in-wirecard-si-trasportavano-milioni-in-buste-di-plastica/ on Thu, 13 May 2021 05:12:26 +0000.