Wirecard’s Ex-COO Jan Marsalek Fled To Russia With A Lot Of BTC

Wirecard’s EX-COO Jan Marsalek boasted about his many connections with Russia’s intelligence agency and fled there with a cache of Bitcoin. Wirecard filed for insolvency after “losing” nearly $2.1 billion as we are reading in the latest Bitcoin news today.

Wirecard’s EX-COO also commented that the payments firm that lost $2.1billion in June, fled to Russia and had a huge cache of Bitcoin there according to a report by the German news outlet Handelsblatt on Sunday. Jan Marsalek brought huge sums to Russia in the form of Bitcoin from Dubai where the company had dubious operations. Employees of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency helped Marsalek to get into a private house in the Moscow region.

World's Most Wanted Man Jan Marsalek Located in Belarus; Data Points to Russian Intel Links https://t.co/NB4VXCqt1M

— Bellingcat (@bellingcat) July 19, 2020

The German prosecutors arrested the head of Wirecard’s Dubai-based unit and the warrant for Marsalek was issued as well but he managed to escape before he could be apprehended and left “slew of false leads and clues as to whether he may be hiding” according to an investigative journalism platform Bellingcat. The Airline bookings and immigration records showed that Marsalek traveled through the Philippines to China with investigators determining that it was false trails.

While working at Wirecard, Marsalek boasted that he had contact with the GRU and claimed to have the formula for Novichok and the military-grade poison that was used by the GRU to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK. At the same time, the researchers calculated that Masalek entered Russia around 60 times in the past ten years. While pursuing the projects in Libya, Bellingcat reported that Marsalek was advised by Andrey Chuprygin who is the western intelligence services believe is a former GRU senior officer that maintains close ties with the intelligence community.

Nach der Verhaftung des ehemaligen Wirecard-Chefs will sich die Staatsanwaltschaft Zugriff auf den langjährigen COO Marsalek sichern. Der könnte sich auf den Philippinen befinden. https://t.co/6LlRTqdRoN

— Handelsblatt (@handelsblatt) June 24, 2020

Marsalek disappeared after Wirecard filed for insolvency after the trustee for the bank accounts for the bank account reported a “spurious balance” leaving the company in a $2.1 billion hole. The effects of the Wirecad’s crisis caused chaos in the UK especially in the banking sector with fintech companies finding access to the accounts that were suspended and crypto debit cards operated by Wirecard.

Marsalek headed up the Asian operators of the company and he was fired along with the Wirecard management team back in June.