Philippines Official Receives 9-Year Sentence for Manipulating Flight Records of Wirecard Fugitive
A past officer from the Philippine Bureau of Immigration (BI) received a nine-year prison term for fabricating vacation documents to lead people into believing that Wirecard's Chief Operations Officer Jan Marsalek came to the Philippines on June 23, 2020.
Marcos S. Nicodemus was found guilty of altering records as a way to aid the Austrian fugitive and suspected Russian spy Marsalek in leaving the country after the demise of Wirecard.
Investigators in the Philippines initiated an examination due to the link between Wirecard and the nation. They took into consideration the possibility that Marsalek's entrance records via Mactan-Cebu International Airport were adjusted since there was no actual scanned passport page of his found.
Restrictions on traveling were put in place in the Philippines due to the COVID-19 situation, implying that Marsalek should've been prohibited from entering the country. The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), however, did not find any evidence of Marsalek being present in the country upon evaluating security footage from the airport.
Right now, Marsalek is in trial without his presence on charges like market manipulation and group-related fraud.
The maximum sentence that prosecutors could provide Nicodemus was nine years. His public job privilege is also taken away forever.
The bond between Nicodemus and Marsalek or the Russian government isn't obvious.
Vanished Money.
Wirecard, initially a payment processor for online gambling and adult entertainment websites, became the front-runner in the German fintech market. The company's market cap reached $28bn until a $2bn gap appeared on its revenue sheet. The money, supposedly present in trustee accounts at two Philippine banks, was said to be non-existent.
Later, Wirecard disclosed that the "missing" $2bn may have been entirely imaginary.
Germany's Fraud Trial of the Century.
The German government is seeking charges against Marsalek in relation to the $2.2bn Wirecard scam. British prosecutors have also implicated him as the man who relayed orders to five Bulgarian nationals supposedly spying for Russia in the UK.
German prosecutors allege Wirecard executives committed a "significant criminal act" by tricking investors and creditors into parting with their billions by overvaluing the firm.
Marsalek vanished in the summer of 2020 following allegations of wrongdoing and allegedly fake accounting practices at Wirecard, prompting Germany's "Fraud Trial of the Century".
A few days after Wirecard's collapse, Marsalek stated he was flying to the Philippines to uncover the vanished funds. He secured a flight to Manila. Nevertheless, he instead made his way into Russia through Belarus.
He is estimated to be residing in Moscow, under the care of the GRU - Russia's military intelligence agency.
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Source: www.casino.org
