The Wirecard saga is one of the most-insane things to ever happen in financial markets.
It was the darling of the German stock market and when the FT started to poke around at signs of fraud, the German government banned short selling. In a journalism Hall-of-Fame moment, the reporters persisted and outed the company as a house of cards, leading to its collapse from a peak market cap of €24 billion.
That’s crazy enough.
But the FT is now reporting that COO Jan Marsalek — who is a fugitive and possibly living in Moscow — was a Russian spy. The allegation is that Wirecard itself was used as a shadow financial network to facilitate Russian undercover operations but not only that, Marsalek helped to facilitate spying operations.
That revelation certainly heightens the warnings and threats that FT journalist Dan McCrum faced, and allegations he was being spied on.
This is also an opportunity for me to post my favourite research note: