1 00:00:07,720 --> 00:00:12,640 In Autumn 2019, I got a call from a source. 2 00:00:14,040 --> 00:00:16,960 He asks me, "Have you ever looked into Wirecard?" 3 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:20,520 "The payment processor? No." 4 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:24,440 "It's a very strange company." 5 00:00:24,520 --> 00:00:26,720 "Companies are being set up." 6 00:00:26,800 --> 00:00:29,520 "Money comes in, money goes out." 7 00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:32,640 That is totally spooky. 8 00:00:34,120 --> 00:00:38,440 He'd been called by foreign friends 9 00:00:38,520 --> 00:00:41,920 who used to work in intelligence agencies, 10 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:43,440 and they warned him, 11 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:46,080 "Are you interested in Wirecard?" 12 00:00:46,160 --> 00:00:47,720 "Keep your hands off it." 13 00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:57,040 Scandal involving a German 14 00:00:57,120 --> 00:00:59,160 digital payments company, Wirecard. 15 00:01:00,960 --> 00:01:03,480 Mr. Braun, reports about your business 16 00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:06,120 read like a financial thriller. 17 00:01:06,200 --> 00:01:09,360 How do you simply miss a couple of billion dollars? 18 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:11,040 Bogus sales, 19 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:12,960 balance sheet manipulations, many allegations. 20 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:14,640 How bad is it going to get? 21 00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:18,720 Money laundering, gambling, porn, 22 00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:21,320 helping terrorist organizations. 23 00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,920 It was the Financial Times versus Wirecard. 24 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:28,040 They were trying to find information, 25 00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:30,680 and then Wirecard were trying to find information back. 26 00:01:31,360 --> 00:01:33,320 It was a total deepfake. 27 00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:36,800 It looked like a bank, but it was actually a robbery. 28 00:01:38,360 --> 00:01:41,840 The former COO, Jan Marsalek, is on the run. 29 00:01:42,680 --> 00:01:45,360 The biggest fraud scandal in German history. 30 00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:50,320 There's an international manhunt for Jan Marsalek. 31 00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:58,640 It's unbelievable how something like this can survive for so long. 32 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:02,280 It was clear to me this was going to be a huge story. 33 00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:19,040 Scammers take advantage of people's desires. 34 00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:25,440 In Germany, the desire was, "We want to be at the front of the pack." 35 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:29,480 Germany's industry is extremely successful 36 00:02:29,560 --> 00:02:31,240 but very old, very traditional. 37 00:02:31,320 --> 00:02:37,000 These famous German brands like Siemens, Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen, 38 00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:39,640 these are all very old companies. 39 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:43,120 That's why German politicians 40 00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:45,480 and German business people are often asked, 41 00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:47,520 "Where are actually your new companies?" 42 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:54,080 We want a major, global, digital champion of our own 43 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:55,640 like in Silicon Valley. 44 00:02:56,720 --> 00:02:59,640 The German Google, the German Facebook. 45 00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:05,200 And Wirecard played on that desire beautifully. 46 00:03:07,080 --> 00:03:08,760 Discover Wirecard. 47 00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:12,920 We develop financial technologies that make payments mobile, seamless, 48 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:14,480 and almost invisible. 49 00:03:15,360 --> 00:03:16,720 Partner up with Wirecard, 50 00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:20,880 the world's leading innovation driver in digital financial technology. 51 00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:24,080 He's a hero, a rock star. 52 00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:28,440 Please give a very warm welcome to the CEO and CTO of Wirecard, 53 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:29,720 Dr. Markus Braun. 54 00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:33,120 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 55 00:03:33,760 --> 00:03:36,000 Wirecard was like the German PayPal. 56 00:03:36,080 --> 00:03:39,080 And in one sentence, that's our business model. 57 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:41,560 Wirecard the processor 58 00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:43,640 for online trade, online shops. 59 00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:47,520 They make sure when I buy something, 60 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:51,720 the money gets from my credit card to the online retailer. 61 00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:54,040 It's not about owning data, 62 00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:59,880 but it's about the algorithms that deliver a value out of data. 63 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:03,640 There's a company founder dressed 64 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:07,720 in a black turtleneck with a neat turn of phrase... 65 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:10,360 The business model delivers a value-add, 66 00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:13,280 and where there is a value-add, 67 00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:16,760 you have the money to reinvent. 68 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:19,440 ...who presents himself as a visionary. 69 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:22,440 The "Steve Jobs of the Alps." 70 00:04:37,080 --> 00:04:38,920 My name is Martin Osterloh. 71 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:42,280 I worked for Wirecard for 16 years. 72 00:04:43,800 --> 00:04:50,360 When I joined in 2005, we were about 130, 150 people. 73 00:04:51,200 --> 00:04:56,760 When I left Wirecard, there were over 6,500 individuals. 74 00:04:58,760 --> 00:05:01,680 Wirecard is one of the fastest-growing 75 00:05:01,760 --> 00:05:03,440 financial commerce platforms. 76 00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:05,880 When at Wirecard, 77 00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:12,920 there was an extremely proud sense of being a big German technology company. 78 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:17,080 Wirecard jumped on the digital train in the '90s 79 00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:19,040 that continues to pick up speed, 80 00:05:19,120 --> 00:05:23,000 and now Wirecard has even overtaken Deutsche Bank 81 00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:26,640 with their worth placed at over €20 billion. 82 00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:30,200 A symbol for the new era of the finance sector. 83 00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:33,800 This was a company on the rise. 84 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:40,200 It grew unlike any other company we'd seen in Germany. 85 00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:47,280 And that rise, that immense growth, led many people to believe in it. 86 00:05:49,080 --> 00:05:52,960 New, successful, global, profitable 87 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:56,960 and German politicians were proud to be able to say, 88 00:05:57,040 --> 00:05:59,000 "Hey. We have a FinTech company!" 89 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:02,680 When the chancellor went to China, 90 00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:07,400 she actually campaigned for Wirecard in 2019 with Xi Jinping. 91 00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:12,520 Everyone in Germany believed in this company. 92 00:06:13,880 --> 00:06:17,000 No one would have believed that this was the work of gangsters. 93 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:36,736 Being a journalist, you get to do all sorts of things 94 00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:38,320 which you're not supposed to. 95 00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:45,800 You're exposing secrets. 96 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:55,520 The first time I ever heard the word Wirecard, 97 00:06:55,600 --> 00:06:59,080 I was looking for dodgy companies to write about. 98 00:06:59,160 --> 00:07:03,680 Corporate frauds, things like that, because they make great stories. 99 00:07:06,160 --> 00:07:08,920 I was chatting to this Australian hedge-fund manager. 100 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:13,360 He's like, "So would you be interested in some German gangsters?" 101 00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:17,280 I think he looked to the accounts and thought it was a fraud. 102 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:18,760 So I made a note, 103 00:07:19,280 --> 00:07:21,560 "Wirecard, something to look into." 104 00:07:23,920 --> 00:07:27,360 From the outside, it looked like a legitimate enterprise. 105 00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:33,280 I mean, it had 6,000 people. It had offices. 106 00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:35,440 The profits were great. 107 00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:38,160 And so I think it just sort of fitted into this, 108 00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:40,720 "Online payments. That's growing quickly, isn't it?" 109 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:46,120 But this big pile of documents, 110 00:07:46,200 --> 00:07:49,200 which showed all these deals Wirecard had done in Asia, 111 00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:52,000 and something about them just seemed a bit off, 112 00:07:52,520 --> 00:07:54,480 that they didn't quite seem real. 113 00:07:55,480 --> 00:08:00,760 Outside of Europe, we see a growth of 25% 114 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:06,160 strongly driven by new regions, by developing regions of Asia. 115 00:08:08,280 --> 00:08:11,000 Wirecard didn't appear to grow by adding customers, 116 00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:13,640 like Spotify might add subscribers. 117 00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:17,400 It was buying its growth by buying businesses, mostly in Asia. 118 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:20,000 But, basically, the numbers don't add up. 119 00:08:21,480 --> 00:08:23,840 I tried to talk to Wirecard. 120 00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:28,080 They were like, "We're very busy dealing with our results. We can't talk to you." 121 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:32,680 Normal companies don't do that when Financial Times knocks on the door. 122 00:08:35,120 --> 00:08:36,200 So, I persisted. 123 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:41,520 Eventually, they put Markus Braun on the phone. 124 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,080 "We are a software company which has a bank as a daughter." 125 00:09:15,160 --> 00:09:17,600 There were many weird things about that conversation. 126 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:06,480 Wirecard always had the same playbook each time it was criticized. 127 00:10:06,560 --> 00:10:11,720 It would say that the critics were in league with short sellers 128 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:14,080 seeking to manipulate the share price. 129 00:10:27,200 --> 00:10:28,800 My name is Tobias Bosler, 130 00:10:28,880 --> 00:10:32,280 and I have been, for many years, a short seller. 131 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,720 Most people invest thinking a share price will rise. 132 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:45,240 A short seller differs from an investor by making money when a share price falls 133 00:10:45,920 --> 00:10:48,640 and loses money when it increases. 134 00:10:49,560 --> 00:10:52,080 The narrative that's given around short sellers 135 00:10:52,120 --> 00:10:56,240 is that they're there to just drive the share prices down on companies 136 00:10:56,320 --> 00:10:57,440 to seek a profit. 137 00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:02,680 Certain areas of the investment community would probably view short sellers 138 00:11:02,760 --> 00:11:06,440 as loosely affiliated with some sort of financial terrorist. 139 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:08,080 Now, the reality of the situation 140 00:11:08,160 --> 00:11:12,120 is that most short sellers would take a short position 141 00:11:12,200 --> 00:11:15,400 because they think fundamentally a stock is overvalued. 142 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:22,600 We are short sellers. 143 00:11:23,440 --> 00:11:28,400 In fact, we're the only "short only, woman only" fund out there in the world. 144 00:11:30,120 --> 00:11:33,400 We exclusively make money by betting against stocks, 145 00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:35,960 betting that the prices of those stocks will fall. 146 00:11:36,040 --> 00:11:39,240 And we gain our conviction around these bets 147 00:11:39,320 --> 00:11:43,080 by doing a lot of deep investigative work to make sure that we're right. 148 00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:47,520 I mean, it's a lot like being a financial detective. 149 00:11:48,200 --> 00:11:53,160 I mean, what we look at are companies that we think are generally up to no good. 150 00:11:54,920 --> 00:11:58,000 I investigated Wirecard for two years. 151 00:11:59,400 --> 00:12:02,200 I understood its business model perfectly. 152 00:12:02,960 --> 00:12:08,520 It handled payments for online businesses in pornography and online gambling, 153 00:12:09,680 --> 00:12:11,080 but it wasn't illegal. 154 00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:17,760 It was certainly a big part of what we did, 155 00:12:17,840 --> 00:12:21,680 and it made the company very strong at the beginning. 156 00:12:22,720 --> 00:12:27,960 Everything from poker companies, casinos, bingo, 157 00:12:28,480 --> 00:12:30,520 certainly also pornography. 158 00:12:31,560 --> 00:12:33,600 But we didn't call them porn. 159 00:12:33,680 --> 00:12:35,240 What would you call them? 160 00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:37,280 Emotional content. 161 00:12:43,640 --> 00:12:46,280 - Are you joking? - I'm not joking. 162 00:12:47,920 --> 00:12:53,480 The poker market in the US was 50% of the global poker market. 163 00:12:55,040 --> 00:12:59,000 But that all changed in 2006 164 00:12:59,080 --> 00:13:03,640 when a new law in America made it illegal 165 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:08,320 to handle payments for US citizens playing poker. 166 00:13:08,400 --> 00:13:13,400 So Wirecard lost a major source of income. 167 00:13:14,440 --> 00:13:18,800 But, in spite of this law, the profits of Wirecard kept rising. 168 00:13:21,360 --> 00:13:23,280 What company is able to do that? 169 00:13:24,160 --> 00:13:26,120 This can't be right. 170 00:13:29,040 --> 00:13:32,360 We're trying to write the story, but it was complicated. 171 00:13:32,440 --> 00:13:35,880 I'd go backwards and forwards and basically got nothing. 172 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:38,120 At that point, I'd given up 173 00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:41,440 because nobody seemed interested in the Wirecard story. 174 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:43,320 And then I get this phone call. 175 00:13:44,680 --> 00:13:46,920 So I went to meet this guy, Matt Earl. 176 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,680 I think he rang me up and said, "Hey. Do you wanna go meet for lunch?" 177 00:13:52,280 --> 00:13:53,600 He was a short seller. 178 00:13:54,440 --> 00:13:57,320 And also he wrote blogs about frauds. 179 00:13:57,400 --> 00:13:58,760 This thing called Zatarra. 180 00:14:01,320 --> 00:14:03,520 The first time I became aware of Wirecard 181 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:07,720 was when a reader of the blog that I wrote reached out to me to say, 182 00:14:07,800 --> 00:14:10,640 "Have you looked at this German payments business, Wirecard?" 183 00:14:12,040 --> 00:14:16,360 There was allegations that Wirecard had been involved 184 00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:19,360 in a money-laundering operation in Florida. 185 00:14:20,960 --> 00:14:22,160 There was press reports 186 00:14:22,240 --> 00:14:26,520 that they had been processing unlawful gambling-related monies 187 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:28,360 into the United States. 188 00:14:28,440 --> 00:14:29,360 That was illegal. 189 00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:31,280 So I thought, "Let's have a look at this." 190 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:36,400 The meeting was in a Japanese restaurant in the city. 191 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:40,400 And so we sort of sit down, you know, order, and it's like, 192 00:14:40,480 --> 00:14:42,640 "Okay. What's going on?" 193 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:46,000 And Matt sort of slides under the table, 194 00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:48,280 I think it was a Tesco carrier bag full, 195 00:14:48,360 --> 00:14:50,880 this big sheaf of documents about that thick. 196 00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:53,320 And then he explained this is the Zatarra report. 197 00:14:54,120 --> 00:14:55,720 This is what he's been working on. 198 00:14:55,800 --> 00:14:58,920 There's 120 pages of this stuff. 199 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:00,920 And the core of the Zatarra allegation 200 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:06,200 was everyone thinks Wirecard is this big payment processor doing legit things, 201 00:15:06,280 --> 00:15:10,000 and actually the heart of its business is laundering money for criminals. 202 00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:19,920 Money laundering is taking the proceeds of crime and cleaning the money. 203 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:27,880 If you rob a bank and have a big bag full of cash, 204 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:31,520 you might launder the money by making it look like you earned the money. 205 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:34,760 And Wirecard was doing this for various online businesses, 206 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:36,840 but the principle is the same. 207 00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:40,080 What Wirecard would do is if it was contentious, 208 00:15:40,160 --> 00:15:42,080 say like gambling or porn, 209 00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:44,760 miscode the transaction as something else. 210 00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:47,440 Instead of putting a payment as gambling, it might go, 211 00:15:47,520 --> 00:15:49,400 "Actually, this is a florist." 212 00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:51,720 Wirecard could get away with it 213 00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:55,120 by taking advantage of various little weaknesses in the system. 214 00:15:56,120 --> 00:15:58,800 All the transactions would come into the United States 215 00:15:58,880 --> 00:16:01,920 via a UK company called Bluetool, 216 00:16:02,800 --> 00:16:04,480 based in Consett, County Durham. 217 00:16:08,800 --> 00:16:12,880 Consett is this little, depressed ex-mining town up on the moors. 218 00:16:13,800 --> 00:16:15,480 Now, you'd think that a company 219 00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:18,720 that is sending hundreds of millions of dollars over to the US 220 00:16:18,800 --> 00:16:22,400 would have a significant office presence. 221 00:16:23,680 --> 00:16:25,160 This was someone's house. 222 00:16:26,840 --> 00:16:28,200 That seems sort of odd. 223 00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:31,120 It is exactly like Ozark. 224 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:32,480 It's an out-of-the-way place 225 00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:36,120 where they could launder huge amounts of money. 226 00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:40,400 We were approached by somebody from up the street 227 00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:42,160 from where we used to live. 228 00:16:42,240 --> 00:16:45,800 And they asked if we just wanted to have some free money. 229 00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:48,320 They said all you had to do was to sign your name, 230 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:50,600 and when you signed your name, you got 50 quid. 231 00:16:51,840 --> 00:16:54,680 The people who were listed as the directors of these companies 232 00:16:54,760 --> 00:16:56,280 had no idea about them. 233 00:16:56,360 --> 00:17:00,720 But really, that company would be a shell to hide the real owner, 234 00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:03,200 which was, you know, a gambling website. 235 00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:07,680 I mean, all you were told at the time was that you would get letters 236 00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:12,080 and all you had to do was post them back, and that's all we've ever had to do. 237 00:17:13,120 --> 00:17:14,640 So you've got a German bank 238 00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:18,480 moving money through the north of England in this remote, little town 239 00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:22,000 for all these dodgy businesses elsewhere in the world. 240 00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:28,280 We're talking about maybe billions of dollars hidden in the shadows. 241 00:17:28,360 --> 00:17:32,440 And it just happened to be this little, red-brick town in the north of England 242 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:35,760 was the perfect channel to make it look legit. 243 00:17:35,840 --> 00:17:38,760 They had literally set up the whole infrastructure 244 00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:42,240 to permit laundering of money to take place. 245 00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:46,360 So in my mind, that rendered Wirecard worthless 246 00:17:46,440 --> 00:17:48,840 because this was an illegal operation. 247 00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:50,920 So yeah. I started shorting the company. 248 00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:00,240 The idea was that I would go away and do my own work, 249 00:18:00,320 --> 00:18:03,280 and then Matt Earl's Zatarra report would come out. 250 00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:05,360 And then I could go, "I've checked all of this." 251 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,320 "Look, there's some interesting parts from it." 252 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:15,000 What I should have said is, "Matt Earl is a short seller." 253 00:18:15,080 --> 00:18:17,560 These people have bet against the Wirecard share price, 254 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:21,000 so they have a big interest in pushing the price down. 255 00:18:21,080 --> 00:18:22,520 So read it with that in mind. 256 00:18:25,840 --> 00:18:28,440 We highlight the wrongdoings of companies. 257 00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:32,280 And there is, obviously, a profit element to it because if we're right, 258 00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:35,600 then we make a return on the capital that we've risked. 259 00:18:37,040 --> 00:18:40,400 When the Zatarra report came out, I sort of dashed back to the office. 260 00:18:40,480 --> 00:18:43,440 I was like, "I've got to tell everyone, and I want the scoop." 261 00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:46,320 And so I wrote this quick piece. 262 00:18:46,400 --> 00:18:48,200 I was in too much of a hurry, 263 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:52,120 and I didn't really stop to think how the whole thing would look. 264 00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:57,360 The Zatarra report had an immediate impact on Wirecard's share price, 265 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:03,840 which fell, but it fell a lot further after Dan published his post, 266 00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:06,280 drawing attention to the Zatarra report. 267 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:12,800 From that one post, a billion euros or more just vanish, 268 00:19:13,400 --> 00:19:17,040 and that put us immediately in hot water. 269 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:24,760 The moment I realized that Wirecard was going to be a troubling story 270 00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:27,440 was when the first lawyers' letters came in. 271 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:31,800 They were raising questions about the relationship 272 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:35,640 between Dan and the authors of the Zatarra report. 273 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:37,280 And there was this allegation 274 00:19:37,360 --> 00:19:40,320 that somehow Dan was colluding with short sellers, 275 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:43,760 people who are essentially betting against the company's share price. 276 00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:49,200 Uh, that's a pretty serious charge because it's essentially suggesting 277 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:52,920 that one of the journalists has been involved in share-price manipulation. 278 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:54,000 That's serious. 279 00:19:56,800 --> 00:20:00,640 In Germany, short sellers have a bad reputation. 280 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:06,760 The perception is because they are betting on the share price dropping, 281 00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:09,960 they are actively seeking to destroy companies. 282 00:20:10,040 --> 00:20:13,640 Jobs are lost and that can't be good. 283 00:20:15,320 --> 00:20:18,480 The Zatarra Report wasn't seen as credible. 284 00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:21,800 The criticism was always, "What kind of report is this?" 285 00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:24,680 "There isn't enough evidence to back up its claims." 286 00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:26,560 "It's just mud-slinging 287 00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:31,280 because German companies do not make mistakes." 288 00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,960 It was seen very strongly as an attack on Germany itself, on German companies. 289 00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:45,040 We were suddenly under attack from all directions. 290 00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:50,960 We had legal threats coming in, anonymous phone calls just abusing us. 291 00:20:51,040 --> 00:20:55,480 And it was unlike anything we'd had previously. 292 00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:56,760 It was relentless. 293 00:20:58,160 --> 00:21:01,160 Twitter's just this whole total, other free-for-all. 294 00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:06,720 So you get people going, "Yeah. You're a criminal, McCrum. Go to jail." 295 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:12,880 Then occasionally, there'd be threats. 296 00:21:14,600 --> 00:21:17,080 "You're gonna get what's coming to you," sort of thing. 297 00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:23,560 There was a vehicle that was parked outside my house 298 00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:25,440 that started following me. 299 00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:30,480 It was very unnerving. 300 00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:36,920 I had the license plates noted down, 301 00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:41,200 and that led back to investigative agencies 302 00:21:41,280 --> 00:21:42,960 that were working for Wirecard. 303 00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:51,720 And then one day, Paul says that somebody's been trying to listen in 304 00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:53,680 to conversations in my office. 305 00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:58,480 I said, "How?" And he says, "Across the bridge." 306 00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:03,840 He spotted this person. 307 00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:07,040 Unbelievable, with a lookout. 308 00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:09,840 And they got this highly sensitive listening device 309 00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:11,960 across the Thames into my office. 310 00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:20,240 What the bloody hell's going on? 311 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:40,200 A few weeks after I opened the short position, 312 00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:44,520 I got a call from the Wirecard lawyer. 313 00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:49,040 He says, "You are short-selling Wirecard." 314 00:22:49,120 --> 00:22:51,800 I thought, "How did you figure that out?" 315 00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:55,560 He read me all the transactions. 316 00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:58,840 Date, time, amount, rate. 317 00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:05,000 He knew everything. Then he says, "We need to talk." 318 00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:09,880 He arrived with two thugs. 319 00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:16,560 They looked exactly as you imagine thugs to be. 320 00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:18,320 Straightaway they pushed me 321 00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,440 and punched the wall with full force. 322 00:23:26,440 --> 00:23:29,080 I admit I was really scared. 323 00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:37,440 What company sends a bunch of thugs to an investor's office? 324 00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:44,040 After that, I stopped looking into Wirecard. 325 00:23:44,120 --> 00:23:45,120 I let it be. 326 00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:49,800 And no one else looked closely into Wirecard, 327 00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,000 except Dan McCrum. 328 00:23:57,680 --> 00:23:59,880 I'd been looking at Wirecard 329 00:23:59,960 --> 00:24:02,560 for a year-and-a-half at that point when Zatarra came out. 330 00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:04,440 And so I was like, 331 00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,960 "Surely regulators, investors are gonna look at this and go, 332 00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:10,320 'There's so much dirt. We've got to look into it.'" 333 00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:13,560 But nothing ever came of it. 334 00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:21,760 Immediately, the stock price rebounded. 335 00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:27,120 My dear shareholders... 336 00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,560 Dr. Braun had the trust of the employees, 337 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:32,720 but he never looked relaxed. 338 00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:39,200 He looked like a business consultant in a room of people having a party. 339 00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:42,040 ...from these added values for the consumer. 340 00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:44,640 But when Dr. Braun was near, 341 00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:47,040 Jan Marsalek was not far away. 342 00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:56,360 Jan was hyper-cool. 343 00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,360 He was mentored by Dr. Braun. 344 00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:05,000 You had the feeling that Braun was proud 345 00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:08,040 to have a fellow Austrian that he could mentor 346 00:25:08,120 --> 00:25:11,960 and be his right-hand guy within the company. 347 00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:17,920 Well, if I find a weak spot, but I'm... 348 00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:20,800 Jan just oozed confidence. 349 00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:25,400 He had very strong command of situations. 350 00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:27,560 It's not working. It's not cold enough. 351 00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:33,960 I didn't have a quarter of the confidence that he had at a snip of a finger. 352 00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,480 Wirecard does not operate as an acquirer. 353 00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:38,720 Um, it can work with partners in the background. 354 00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:44,480 When you ask him if he had a few minutes of his valuable time, 355 00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:47,080 he would always say, "For you, always." 356 00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:49,880 But he would say that to almost everyone. 357 00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:55,376 Marsalek is a completely different type. 358 00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,440 Extremely charming, 359 00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,440 very approachable, a great communicator. 360 00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,880 Everything Braun didn't have, Marsalek had, 361 00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:08,320 which is why they were a great team. 362 00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:15,480 I think that very few people knew who Jan Marsalek really was. 363 00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,520 He is certainly at the center of this scandal. 364 00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:24,320 He is the one who made sure that the turnover 365 00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:28,000 was always the way his boss, Braun, wanted. 366 00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,560 The German Stock Exchange is richer because of one company. 367 00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,080 The payment-processing company, Wirecard, from Aschheim near Munich 368 00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:47,800 has made the leap into the stock market premier league. 369 00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:53,280 Wirecard's share price last year was €77.40. 370 00:26:53,360 --> 00:26:57,040 Today it stands at €189.40. 371 00:26:57,120 --> 00:27:00,400 Our figures tell a story of strong growth. 372 00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,440 How our business is valued is a question for the investors. 373 00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,680 Wirecard has shaken up the German stock exchange this week 374 00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:12,080 and kicked the Commerzbank out of the elite DAX index. 375 00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,200 It's about making the cake much bigger. 376 00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:19,760 I'm in the business of making the cake much bigger. 377 00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,400 I've got a German CEO here of the company Wirecard. 378 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,920 Um, and today, Markus Braun, 379 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,360 you guys are gonna replace Commerzbank, in the DAX. 380 00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:32,120 You're gonna be one of the big companies on the benchmark index here. 381 00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:33,600 What does that mean to you? 382 00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,240 I think it brings a lot of awareness, positive awareness. 383 00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:37,880 Uh, it's good for investors. 384 00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,440 But of course, in operative terms, it doesn't change our strong strategy. 385 00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,960 A lot of investors believe in German values, 386 00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,760 and now it has the DAX seal of approval. 387 00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,200 So a lot of people thought a DAX company 388 00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:56,680 would be tightly regulated by the German authorities. 389 00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:00,400 Who wouldn't be thrilled to have money invested in Wirecard? 390 00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:09,440 Wirecard, at the time, 391 00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:12,840 was a big talking point throughout the London market. 392 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:17,360 We'd had legal complaints, but we brushed them off. 393 00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:23,640 A while later, I was having lunch with one of my stock-market sources, 394 00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:25,640 and Wirecard came up. 395 00:28:26,360 --> 00:28:30,320 He said, "You know that they will pay you a lot of money 396 00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,160 to stop writing about them." 397 00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,320 And I laughed, and I said, "Don't be stupid." 398 00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,120 He said, "No, no, no. Definitely." 399 00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,840 "They will pay you good money not to write about them." 400 00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,680 And he said, "Look. Go and talk to Gary." 401 00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:48,040 - Gary and Tom. - Gary. I'm Tom. 402 00:28:50,160 --> 00:28:52,880 - What's with the glasses? - Best without glasses. 403 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:54,880 Is it? I thought they look cool. 404 00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,480 Gary is a great, old mate, very active trader. 405 00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,880 You know, he had a good ear for what was happening. 406 00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:07,280 And he basically said, 407 00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:10,440 "What's this stuff you've been writing about Wirecard?" 408 00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:12,400 "Are you sure it's right?" 409 00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:17,160 And Gary says, "'Cause I've got a guy here who says it's all wrong." 410 00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:19,360 "Actually, he wants to talk to you." 411 00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:22,480 And I said, "Well, who is it?" 412 00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,200 "It's a guy called Jan Marsalek." 413 00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,600 I could've fallen off my chair. 414 00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,960 You know, Gary was a confidential source of mine. 415 00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:39,080 How did Marsalek find out that we knew each other? 416 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,920 It would have been around 2017. 417 00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:51,400 One of my good friends came into the bar where I usually get my breakfast 418 00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:54,600 and had a little Post-It note with a number on, 419 00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:56,280 and a name, Jan Marsalek, 420 00:29:56,360 --> 00:30:00,200 and said, "Can you call this fella? It will be worth your while." 421 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,680 Didn't know what it meant at the time. It's odd, but we might make some money. 422 00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:06,400 We'll have a try. 423 00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:08,760 So I phoned up and he said to me, 424 00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:12,680 "Look. I'm prepared to pay you a very substantial amount of money 425 00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:16,200 to introduce me to your good friend, Paul Murphy." 426 00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:19,960 I said, "I'll talk to Paul." 427 00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:24,640 Gary says, "This guy, Jan Marsalek, is desperate to meet you." 428 00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:29,720 "He will get on a plane and come to London for lunch at the drop of a hat." 429 00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:33,400 The immediate thought was this is some sort of setup. 430 00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:37,040 Because it's such a strange, uh, thing to happen. 431 00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:39,080 So I said yes to the lunch. 432 00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:47,640 Basically, we wanted to see whether Marsalek would offer me money 433 00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,120 to stop writing about Wirecard. 434 00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:51,720 That was the plan. 435 00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,600 I was introduced to Jan Marsalek for the first time. 436 00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,320 He was obviously very sharp, 437 00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,560 very careful in what he said. 438 00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:10,800 On first impressions, 439 00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:15,840 I was looking at a very well-dressed, articulate, straight-talking man. 440 00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:19,680 It was the Financial Times versus Wirecard. 441 00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,000 They were trying to find any sort of information on Wirecard. 442 00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,600 And then Wirecard were trying to find information back. 443 00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:28,040 It was quite awkward. 444 00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:33,240 He talked at length about how he had direct experience 445 00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:38,080 of journalists who were taking bribes to write negative articles. 446 00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:43,240 I told him I'd never accepted a bribe, 447 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,280 and he said, "I know that, Paul." 448 00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:48,120 "I've seen evidence that you've never accepted a bribe." 449 00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:51,200 And I thought, "Ah, you've been through my bank account." 450 00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:52,440 Uh, and he clearly had. 451 00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:56,520 I kind of realized, at that point, 452 00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:01,480 that he wasn't going to suddenly offer me a bag of cash there at the table. 453 00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:03,720 There were too many people around the table. 454 00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:10,680 It ended in Jan saying, "I'm very happy that Paul's listened." 455 00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:12,880 Paul said, "We're gonna draw a line under this, 456 00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,800 and FT will not keep regurgitating this old stuff." 457 00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,720 "However, if there's new stuff, 458 00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:19,880 we will nail you." 459 00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:22,160 And Jan was smiling. 460 00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,600 "That's not gonna happen because we're doing nothing wrong." 461 00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,600 At that point, I negotiated a fee for my PR. 462 00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:37,200 I asked for a set fee of 500,000 euros. 463 00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:43,680 He settled on 32-and-a-half thousand euros a month 464 00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:44,680 for six months, 465 00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,760 but said, "Look. Can you keep me in contact with the short sellers, 466 00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:49,520 just so I know what's going on?" 467 00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,560 And I felt a little bit like a double agent, but Paul knew, 468 00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:53,960 and Jan knew. 469 00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:02,560 I launched Safkhet Capital Management 470 00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:04,280 in January of 2018. 471 00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,520 We were just doing our own research, looking for opportunities, 472 00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,360 and a name that came up consistently was Wirecard. 473 00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:17,520 Because, finally, Wirecard is making its first foray onto US soil. 474 00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:29,360 Over 20-plus years, we've emerged as a leader in payment solutions 475 00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:31,160 in North America and beyond. 476 00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:33,320 What was new at that time was the fact 477 00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:37,760 that Wirecard had acquired Citi's North American prepaid-card business. 478 00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:43,600 Prepaid cards are a very effective way of laundering cash internationally, 479 00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:45,480 including dirty money. 480 00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:49,800 You don't need to put your name on the card or open a bank account. 481 00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,800 You can just have a card with the Wirecard logo. 482 00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,920 The amount of criminal activity that could go on is alarming. 483 00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,440 That was something that we wanted to really dig into 484 00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:06,200 and see if there was anything that related to these allegations in Zatarra 485 00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:09,400 that would now be occurring on American soil. 486 00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,080 Wirecard's offices were in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, 487 00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:18,000 which is two hours from New York City. 488 00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:21,440 So we decided why not just drive over there 489 00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:23,280 in Christina's beat-up... 490 00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,320 ...little Volkswagen? 491 00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:36,680 We saw the Wirecard signs, 492 00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,120 and then there was no security, 493 00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:40,640 so we just walked up the stairs. 494 00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:45,440 It was very large. 495 00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,240 Really, it should maybe fit 600 people... 496 00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,000 - A lot, yes. - ...but there were maybe 30 people. 497 00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:53,680 And then they asked us what we wanted, 498 00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,760 and we said that we wanted to speak to someone about buying prepaid cards. 499 00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:02,880 He assured me that it's all very easy, I could give those cards to who I wanted. 500 00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:04,000 It's not a problem. 501 00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:08,280 And then he said I could even get cards up to $150,000 502 00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:11,000 on a single card. 503 00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:15,040 This was a massive shock. 504 00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:17,200 And when we checked on the dark web 505 00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,600 to buy prepaid cards that are being resold on the dark web, 506 00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:23,040 the most you can get is $10,000. 507 00:35:24,720 --> 00:35:28,720 Fall of 2018, where I finally just pinged Dan McCrum. 508 00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,880 And said, "Hey. We're looking at Wirecard in the US." 509 00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:36,560 "I think we have something here." 510 00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,280 Fahmi wasn't the only short seller who contacted me 511 00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:46,200 after Wirecard entered the DAX. 512 00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,800 I was bombarded with ideas by short sellers. 513 00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,120 Some of them were obsessed with money laundering. 514 00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:55,440 Others were convinced that Wirecard's business couldn't be real. 515 00:35:57,160 --> 00:35:59,960 The problem was that none of them had any proof. 516 00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:03,640 They were all theories, but then... when was it? 517 00:36:03,720 --> 00:36:07,720 Sort of one Monday morning in October, I get this funny email from Singapore. 518 00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:12,120 Criminal behavior at a big financial company. 519 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:14,000 Wirecard. 520 00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:18,680 And so I get in touch with Stefania Palma in Singapore. 521 00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:31,800 In Singapore, Wirecard was just absolutely pervasive. 522 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,640 Thousands of shops, and merchants, and hotels 523 00:36:35,720 --> 00:36:38,760 were using Wirecard's card machines. 524 00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:44,800 Dan became aware that there was a potential whistleblower 525 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:46,880 who had a lot of information 526 00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,920 and was very keen to speak to us as soon as possible. 527 00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,680 The first meeting was at Changi Airport. 528 00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:04,840 Going in, I knew very little of who I was meeting. 529 00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,600 I was definitely very cautious. 530 00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,360 I found out his real name is Pav. 531 00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,480 He'd been the head of legal for Asia at Wirecard. 532 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:19,760 He had recently left the company 533 00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:24,640 and was full of frustration and anger 534 00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:27,960 in terms of what he had witnessed. 535 00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:33,960 It was an extremely intense conversation that lasted hours. 536 00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:40,320 I realized the overwhelming volume of information that he had. 537 00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,120 I immediately gave Dan a call and said, 538 00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:46,640 "This could be immense for us." 539 00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:49,600 "I hope that all of this checks out 540 00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,000 because if it does, we're just sitting on gold." 541 00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:54,880 Okay. Holy shit. 542 00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:58,080 This sounds like the real deal. I think I need to come to Singapore. 543 00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,960 We met out in the open underneath Wirecard's old building. 544 00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:18,280 We were extremely paranoid about Wirecard's hacking capabilities. 545 00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:23,080 We sort of relied on the fact that the fountain covered the noise. 546 00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:28,440 And he literally starts drawing diagrams of how Wirecard works 547 00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:30,040 and who the people are. 548 00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:33,960 And then he explained how he started working for Wirecard, 549 00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:37,160 he gets contacted by this woman on the finance team, 550 00:38:37,240 --> 00:38:39,480 and she tells him this incredible story. 551 00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,480 She'd been called into a room in the Wirecard offices 552 00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:46,120 with the rest of the finance team. 553 00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:49,360 And her boss is this Indonesian guy called Edo Kurniawan. 554 00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:52,840 And he's really young for the job. He's only 33. 555 00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,240 And if you looked at his CV, there's basically nothing there. 556 00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:59,360 But somehow he's running the Asian finance team, 557 00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:00,800 and that is, by the way, 558 00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:03,560 a very significant portion of Wirecard's business. 559 00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,040 So this woman goes into the meeting, 560 00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:11,160 and suddenly, what Edo does, is he starts drawing on a whiteboard. 561 00:39:11,240 --> 00:39:14,000 And he's explaining how they're gonna cook the books. 562 00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,160 Almost like that scene where they're like, 563 00:39:16,240 --> 00:39:18,480 "Here's the bank and you guys will go in here, 564 00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:20,480 and the van will be waiting outside." 565 00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:21,760 Like a bank job. 566 00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:26,040 And so she goes and tells Pav, the lawyer in Singapore, about it. 567 00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:29,640 Immediately Pav says, "Right. We better look into this." 568 00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:31,680 Within a matter of weeks, 569 00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:34,560 there's a full-blown internal investigation going on. 570 00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:41,160 None of Wirecard's top brass know anything about it. 571 00:39:41,240 --> 00:39:44,960 And they start finding all of these dodgy transactions. 572 00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:50,680 So, Pav put together this presentation for the key guys in Germany. 573 00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:53,200 "Look at what we found." 574 00:39:55,720 --> 00:39:58,280 Suddenly the message comes back from Munich, 575 00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:00,400 "Good work, guys. We'll take it from here." 576 00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:04,840 "Yeah. So we're gonna put Jan Marsalek in charge of it." 577 00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,600 It becomes clear very soon that nothing's gonna happen. 578 00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:14,960 And then Pav gets forced out, 579 00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:20,040 but he takes copies of the inbox of this guy Edo 580 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:22,480 and gives it to us. 581 00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:26,040 Seventy gigs worth of data. 582 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:42,640 As soon as I got back from Singapore, we knew we had to think about security. 583 00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:50,680 We were very aware that Wirecard was spying on us. 584 00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:55,200 Dan had to operate in complete secrecy. 585 00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:59,320 We were basically acting on the basis 586 00:40:59,960 --> 00:41:02,200 that anything on the FT network 587 00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:04,240 was at risk of being compromised. 588 00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,160 We got Dan set up with an air-gapped laptop, 589 00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:13,000 which had the modem ripped out so that it can't be hacked. 590 00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:20,640 So this pile of documents from Pav, that went on the super-secure laptop. 591 00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:24,080 So every morning, I have to sign out the key to the big safe. 592 00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:28,520 The key was about that long, which gives you a sense of how big the safe was. 593 00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:30,000 It was like a giant fridge. 594 00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,480 Get out the laptop and the files that I'm working on, 595 00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:38,200 then go into my own little bunker. 596 00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:42,280 A little room in the middle of the building in the FT... 597 00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:46,560 and start going through the material we've got. 598 00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:58,200 Six weeks of every day, laptop out the safe, 599 00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,680 go through all the emails, print them off, try and work out what's going on. 600 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:07,320 Okay, right. That's the time. Close it down again. Back in the safe. 601 00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:10,600 Start again the next day. 602 00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:16,880 I was just following trails through the emails. 603 00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:24,160 Sticking keyword searches into Outlook, like "India," "Marsalek." 604 00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,560 I had been puzzling about this company for years 605 00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:29,640 and suddenly... 606 00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:32,480 it was like I was inside. 607 00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:40,960 I was also trying to get Jan Marsalek. 608 00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:44,200 I'd never met him. 609 00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:47,200 I'd never spoken to him, but I knew he was the enemy. 610 00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:52,520 I just was looking for anything to try and tie him 611 00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:54,160 to what had happened in Singapore. 612 00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,080 I could sort of see he was always at the edge of it. 613 00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:04,600 Like he was involved, but I couldn't quite prove it. 614 00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:13,240 But what we can do is we can boil it just down to Edo Kurniawan, 615 00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:15,480 this guy in the finance team. 616 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,880 But if Wirecard had fired this guy, Edo, then we didn't have a story. 617 00:44:08,240 --> 00:44:11,400 Edo was there, and he was working on the audit. 618 00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:12,800 It had to be a cover-up. 619 00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:22,880 It goes up online. 620 00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,560 Within seconds, the Wirecard share price crashes. 621 00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:29,560 In the space of three days, 622 00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:33,440 we've knocked eight billion euros off the value of the company. 623 00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:35,360 Holy shit. The story's working. 624 00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,520 That was the first moment 625 00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:42,600 where I felt that this could get really ugly. 626 00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:57,120 I only heard about the Financial Times' coverage secondhand. 627 00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:58,280 NEW ATTACK ON WIRECARD 628 00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,000 It was the typical bias. 629 00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:04,000 They said, "It is a foreign conspiracy against a German company." 630 00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:07,160 "A German company is the victim and must be protected." 631 00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:13,120 Wirecard had hired a famous lawyer in Bavaria. 632 00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:20,440 The lawyer said to the public prosecutor, Baumler-Hosl, 633 00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:24,160 that Wirecard is under attack by short sellers 634 00:45:24,240 --> 00:45:26,320 and its very existence is in jeopardy. 635 00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:31,040 Hildegard Baumler-Hosl contacted the German financial regulator. 636 00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:35,520 The regulator BaFin then said, "We need to protect Wirecard." 637 00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:39,040 And banned short-selling of Wirecard shares. 638 00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:44,040 And even filed criminal charges against Dan McCrum and Stefania Palma. 639 00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:52,120 And I was shocked, and I called Dan immediately and I said, 640 00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:55,000 "Dan, what the hell is going on? What is this?" 641 00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:59,200 BaFin, the German Financial Regulator, 642 00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:00,320 comes out and goes, 643 00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:02,840 "We're going to look into market manipulation." 644 00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:06,520 What does that mean that they have? 645 00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:10,440 Because we haven't been contacted by them, we didn't know what the evidence was. 646 00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:14,120 So it's like, "Well, okay. What's been cooked up to say I'm a crook?" 647 00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,360 Because I just don't understand what's happening here. 648 00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:23,040 I think at the very beginning, I just truly could not believe that 649 00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:27,400 after all the work we'd done, that we would become the targets. 650 00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,720 When you have the regulator one of 651 00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:34,880 the most powerful financial markets in Europe 652 00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:38,600 sending a very clear sign that they're coming for you, 653 00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,360 you can either let that get to you, 654 00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:46,280 or you try to sort of channel all that rage and frustration 655 00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:47,840 into the investigation, 656 00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:51,640 really hitting the story, you know, the hardest you ever have. 657 00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,480 And I think you know which option we went for. 658 00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,800 I'm back in London in the bunker, carrying on working. 659 00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:11,360 I'd been looking through Wirecard's customers, 660 00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:14,600 and I started to realize hundreds of millions of euros 661 00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,080 of Wirecard's business 662 00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:19,280 were provided by just these three partners. 663 00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:24,880 Al Alam, Senjo, and PayEasy. 664 00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,320 At that point in time, these three partner businesses contributed 665 00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:33,360 to something like half of Wirecard's global sales. 666 00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:36,160 One of these partner businesses was in the Philippines. 667 00:47:36,240 --> 00:47:38,400 Uh, a business called PayEasy. 668 00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:52,160 On paper, PayEasy was this very important business to Wirecard. 669 00:47:52,240 --> 00:47:55,560 We say to Stefania, "We need to find out what is going on. Is this real?" 670 00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:02,840 I remember going to this office covered with logos of both PayEasy 671 00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,320 and a bus company called Fröhlich Tours. 672 00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:12,560 There were drivers coming in and out. 673 00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,320 It was clear that the day-to-day operations 674 00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:17,640 were, in fact, just the bus company. 675 00:48:18,720 --> 00:48:20,920 This looks fishy. 676 00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:27,200 I ended up driving three hours north of Manila 677 00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:30,880 in this region that is actually famous for rice fields, 678 00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,680 chasing after a company called ConePay, another partner business for Wirecard. 679 00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,120 And we finally find this address. 680 00:48:44,720 --> 00:48:45,960 Someone's house. 681 00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,840 This middle-aged man opened the door, 682 00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:57,200 and the first thing I see is a table with a brown Pomeranian 683 00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:00,480 and a small white dog. 684 00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:04,520 There were a couple of middle-aged Filipino men 685 00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,400 who were just grooming these dogs. 686 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:11,360 Is this the headquarters of a payments company? 687 00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:16,920 It was obvious we were standing in the middle of a family home, 688 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,840 at which point someone remembers, 689 00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,600 "Wait. We got this in the mail," 690 00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,640 and they hand me an envelope. 691 00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:31,960 I take the paper out and immediately see Wirecard Bank letterhead, 692 00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:34,160 ConePay, 693 00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,680 and the address where we were standing. 694 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:42,160 I froze completely, and I remember shaking 695 00:49:42,240 --> 00:49:47,040 because I knew at that point that we had cracked the whole thing. 696 00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:57,800 I'd spent years trying to solve this puzzle. 697 00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,160 What is the deal with Wirecard's business? 698 00:50:03,240 --> 00:50:05,280 Is it doing all this money laundering? 699 00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:07,720 Is it juicing its profits? 700 00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:11,520 And suddenly, you're like, 701 00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:13,840 "Holy shit." 702 00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:17,360 "The whole thing's fake. None of it's real." 703 00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:19,920 It's just this incredible bluff. 704 00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:28,720 They came up with this deepfake... 705 00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,360 where they were using these three business partners 706 00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:36,640 to just invent a whole load of business. 707 00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:40,800 From the outside, it looked like a real company. 708 00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:43,040 Thousands of people thought they were working 709 00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:45,360 on a legitimate enterprise. 710 00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:47,440 It was the emperor's new clothes. 711 00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:52,856 There's been a fresh report from the FT, 712 00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:56,280 and they're talking about half of your worldwide revenue 713 00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:58,920 and almost all of your reported profits 714 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:03,080 effectively coming from three opaque partner companies 715 00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:04,240 in recent years. 716 00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:08,320 We do not get distracted by all of this noise. 717 00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,840 This financial thriller continues with the latest punch-up 718 00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,040 between Wirecard and the Financial Times. 719 00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,520 Dan McCrum, for us, was the devil. 720 00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:21,440 He kept on bringing things out that made the stock price go down. 721 00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:25,800 In February, there were new articles and allegations 722 00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:27,640 and the share price fell again. 723 00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:31,800 At the end of March, new accusations were published 724 00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,240 and the share price collapsed once again. 725 00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:37,680 A BILLIONAIRE ON THE DEFENSIVE 726 00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:40,840 Senior management at Wirecard very quickly said 727 00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:44,640 that the basis of this report was completely without merit. 728 00:51:44,720 --> 00:51:47,000 There is a claim that the Financial Times 729 00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,880 deliberately caused the fall in the Wirecard share price 730 00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:53,200 so that speculators could cash in. 731 00:51:55,240 --> 00:51:58,160 We thought Dan McCrum was making a quick buck. 732 00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:01,400 They were the bad guys, and we were the good guys. 733 00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,560 - Sound running. - Okay. Let's start. 734 00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:10,800 How do you personally go about scandals, confusion, chaos? 735 00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:12,840 Have you ever thought about resigning? 736 00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:14,920 I've never thought about resignation. 737 00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,760 Can you exclude the possibility of more dirty laundry airing 738 00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:19,840 that will put the share price under pressure? 739 00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:23,040 We firmly reject these serious allegations. 740 00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:28,680 We think these allegations are mainly market speculations. 741 00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:33,320 At that point, the FT had run a series 742 00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,600 of really quite damaging allegations, 743 00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,680 but Wirecard's share price just seemed to go up and up and up. 744 00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:42,480 People loved the company. 745 00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,360 At the Frankfurt stock exchange, 746 00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:49,600 Wirecard has announced its annual results, increasing its profits by 35%, 747 00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:52,320 an increase of €350 million, 748 00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:54,960 and says it will continue to grow this year. 749 00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:57,960 Following a move from the payments giant Wirecard, 750 00:52:58,040 --> 00:52:59,720 shares jumping more than 6% there 751 00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:02,440 after the company landed a one-billion-dollar investment 752 00:53:02,520 --> 00:53:04,760 from Japan's SoftBank group. 753 00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:09,720 SoftBank investing a billion dollars in German FinTech company Wirecard. 754 00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,320 When news of the SoftBank investment emerged, 755 00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:14,320 we were dumbfounded. 756 00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:16,400 In exchange for a 6% stake, 757 00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:20,000 SoftBank will help the firm expand to Japan and South Korea. 758 00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:21,320 We couldn't believe it. 759 00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:24,800 You know, we had put what we thought was clear evidence 760 00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:27,120 that this was a fraud on the table. 761 00:53:27,720 --> 00:53:32,880 But SoftBank were about to give this company 900 million euros. 762 00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:39,640 At that point with Dan, I started discussing 763 00:53:39,720 --> 00:53:44,880 how we were going to actually present evidence that was overwhelming. 764 00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:49,280 This is a criminal enterprise. 765 00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:54,880 So, Wirecard had to do something... to stop us. 766 00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:01,480 The next day, I get a letter from Wirecard saying, 767 00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,120 "We've got this tape recording of this guy called Nick Gold, 768 00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:07,640 and he knows that the FT story is coming, 769 00:54:07,720 --> 00:54:11,440 and you're clearly in cahoots, and you're corrupt." 770 00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:18,440 My first thought was, "Okay. Uh, this has to be a setup." 771 00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:22,760 "This has got to be Marsalek's dirty tricks again." 772 00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:39,440 I had no idea who Nick Gold was. 773 00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:49,000 I am Nick Gold. 774 00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:50,680 Catch! That's it! 775 00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:51,760 I'm an investor. 776 00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:54,320 A bad investor, but an investor. 777 00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:59,160 I first met Nick Gold by chance. 778 00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:05,880 Gary Kilbey was having drinks to celebrate his 60th birthday, 779 00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:07,760 and Nick Gold was there. 780 00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:12,600 I remember Paul Murphy. We were both getting drunk together. 781 00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:16,480 He told me if I needed a journalist, and I had a story to report, he was one. 782 00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:18,680 Drink as much as you can take, here! 783 00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:24,080 And I phoned him months later, and said, "Can I see you?" 784 00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:27,520 He says, "I can't do it for two weeks, 'cause I'm stuck on Wirecard." 785 00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:29,520 The minute he said, "I'm stuck on Wirecard," 786 00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:31,240 I knew this was a no-brainer scenario. 787 00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:33,480 He'll bring something out. It can't be positive, 788 00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:35,040 therefore this is free money. 789 00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,160 I have to short-sell this company within an inch of my life. 790 00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:41,480 Which I did to the tune of hundreds and hundreds of millions. 791 00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:47,760 I've now taken a huge short position in Wirecard, 792 00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:49,240 which is probably known to them. 793 00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:51,160 They're going to see who the big shorts are. 794 00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:54,040 So they now know Nick Gold is a massive short seller. 795 00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:00,680 I'm then on a beach in Cannes, 796 00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,760 dancing on tables and being a lunatic as I am, 797 00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:05,280 and having a great time. 798 00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:08,800 And somebody comes up to me that I haven't seen in years. 799 00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:09,800 He's a football agent. 800 00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:11,880 I've known him forever. He worked for me years ago, 801 00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:14,840 and he says he's now gotten the Kuwaiti National Investment Fund 802 00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:17,400 and they're his partners and he's got billions of pounds, 803 00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,160 they'd like to invest in the stock market. 804 00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:20,600 So could I help? 805 00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:28,000 A few days later, I fly back to London to meet the Kuwaiti Investment Fund. 806 00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:33,480 Well, what happened is a magnificent sheikh walked in 807 00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:36,480 and his spokesperson next to him walked in with my football guy, 808 00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:38,000 and they sat down. 809 00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:40,840 'Cause I'm with my friend, I thought I could speak openly. 810 00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:44,400 I then tell him there are billions to be made short selling Wirecard. 811 00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:46,840 And I know the company's going down 812 00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:49,280 because the Financial Times are writing an article, 813 00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:50,720 and the company is fraudulent, 814 00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:53,760 and that we were going to build great big ships together. 815 00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,200 This was as sheikh as you get. He stank of affluence. 816 00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:02,320 The man stank of money. You could tell this is a proper sheikh. 817 00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:03,760 As it turns out, I was wrong. 818 00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:10,200 The sheikh left, and the guys stayed to facilitate for the sheikh, 819 00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:11,920 and I was left with those two. 820 00:57:12,680 --> 00:57:14,856 - Hey. I'm Nick Gold. - Hello, Nick. How are you? 821 00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:17,960 What sort of size business were you thinking of doing? 822 00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:20,576 At the moment, they are looking at investing €50 million. 823 00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:21,600 Okay. 824 00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:25,120 There was a short seller, Nick Gold, 825 00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:30,840 who met with an investor who secretly recorded him. 826 00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:33,880 This is as good as it gets in terms of... 827 00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:36,000 - We know the article's coming. - Okay. 828 00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:37,640 And I bet it's gonna be today. 829 00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:41,240 We know now that this investor was actually a private detective 830 00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:46,720 who was hired by someone associated with Wirecard. 831 00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,600 So what Wirecard did was... The sheikh wasn't real. It was fake. 832 00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:12,800 The friend of mine, that paid the guy four million, 833 00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:15,680 he got my four million by the way, that bastard. 834 00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:18,760 Then I got a text message from Paul Murphy saying, 835 00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:20,440 "What the fuck have you done?" 836 00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:23,560 This was a complete setup. 837 00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:26,640 Oh, I was furious, absolutely furious 838 00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:31,360 because Wirecard's found a way of presenting evidence 839 00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:35,440 that appeared to show that I personally was in cahoots 840 00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:38,920 with a guy who was making money shorting the stock. 841 00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:47,840 Within hours, all this detail is in the hands of the German press, 842 00:58:47,920 --> 00:58:49,880 who are writing articles saying, 843 00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,240 "Here's clear evidence that the FT's corrupt." 844 00:58:55,640 --> 00:58:58,920 I was pretty pissed off, actually. Pretty pissed off. 845 00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:01,720 I was confident that we'd been set up, 846 00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:05,520 but I have to protect the reputation of the FT. 847 00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:09,120 You know, I thought, "Paul you're a brilliant reporter, 848 00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,320 but you've done something really dumb." 849 00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:13,840 "You're gonna have to spend time in the sin bin." 850 00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:19,280 And that meant a rigorous external legal investigation 851 00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:22,560 to show the world that there was no truth in that. 852 00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:27,080 That was the first time that I really felt vulnerable. 853 00:59:27,600 --> 00:59:29,280 You know, we were basically suspended. 854 00:59:30,240 --> 00:59:33,440 So we have to sit and wait for this investigation to happen. 855 00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:36,880 But then the story gets weirder and weirder. 856 00:59:44,560 --> 00:59:46,920 I'm Jorg Schmitt from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. 857 00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:50,840 I'm the chief editor of the investigations team. 858 00:59:51,360 --> 00:59:56,240 I was at my desk when I suddenly got a call from an unknown number. 859 00:59:57,160 --> 00:59:59,720 On the other end was a young woman. 860 00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:01,920 She said, "Are you interested in Wirecard?" 861 01:00:03,160 --> 01:00:05,600 "Do you know Prinzregentenstrasse 61?" 862 01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:08,960 "It's the secret office of Jan Marsalek." 863 01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:12,960 Even colleagues closest to Marsalek didn't know 864 01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:16,240 that there was this second office in the Prinzregentenstrasse. 865 01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:21,840 He would meet with a very illustrious circle of people, 866 01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:25,680 do business, and host wild parties. 867 01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:31,480 It's Marsalek's boy gang, I'd say. 868 01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:33,040 We always find Martin W., 869 01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:36,360 who had been in the Austrian secret service. 870 01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:41,320 El-Obeidi, a former Libyan intelligence officer. 871 01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:48,760 Stani, a Russian who was supposedly in Munich visiting his sick mother, 872 01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:55,040 but we think he was probably an FSB man, a Russian secret-service agent. 873 01:00:56,040 --> 01:01:02,720 So suddenly we had three former intelligence agents 874 01:01:02,800 --> 01:01:07,400 who were in and around the Prinzregentenstrasse. 875 01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:11,640 And the thing is the Prinzregentenstrasse is not just anywhere in Munich. 876 01:01:11,720 --> 01:01:14,920 It is directly opposite the Russian consulate. 877 01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:19,400 There is obviously a secret-service connection. 878 01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:22,080 That electrified me. 879 01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:28,600 Why might Marsalek be so interesting to intelligence agencies? 880 01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:32,960 Wirecard is a company 881 01:01:33,040 --> 01:01:35,880 through which there are billions of transactions every year. 882 01:01:36,520 --> 01:01:40,120 And these payments are gold mines for the secret services 883 01:01:40,200 --> 01:01:43,600 because they show who could be compromised 884 01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:47,880 because their creditcard information could show porn usage, 885 01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:49,920 brothel visits, or whatever else. 886 01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:54,080 To have a source like Marsalek 887 01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:56,640 who is always on the move around the world, 888 01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:58,560 that makes a lot of sense. 889 01:02:19,560 --> 01:02:21,560 When the news came through 890 01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:23,760 that Paul had been suspended, 891 01:02:23,840 --> 01:02:25,920 Paul pulled me aside and basically said, 892 01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:28,640 "Both Braun and Marsalek are Austrian." 893 01:02:28,720 --> 01:02:32,320 "Ask around. See what you can find in Vienna." 894 01:02:34,560 --> 01:02:36,960 Someone recommended this politician 895 01:02:37,040 --> 01:02:40,440 that was looking at all kinds of political-corruption stuff 896 01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:41,720 going on in Austria. 897 01:02:42,360 --> 01:02:43,720 Stephanie Krisper. 898 01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:50,040 Vienna is sadly mostly an inviting terrain 899 01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:52,200 for intelligence officers, 900 01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:57,000 for dubious characters, spies, economic spies. 901 01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:03,000 We met on a boat in the Danube Canal. 902 01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:05,880 I just sort of said, "Do you know Jan Marsalek?" 903 01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:09,880 She sat back a bit and pondered. 904 01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:13,560 She knew someone that knows Jan, 905 01:03:14,280 --> 01:03:16,080 but she had to be very careful 906 01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:19,880 because he was fearful of who Jan was involved with. 907 01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:25,800 And so we arranged to meet him at Café Pruckel. 908 01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:31,960 Stephanie walked in and introduced me to this friend of hers. 909 01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:36,080 What followed were probably the most remarkable 20 minutes 910 01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:39,520 in my short 14 years in journalism. 911 01:03:43,480 --> 01:03:46,800 My name is Killian Kleinschmidt. I'm a German National. 912 01:03:46,880 --> 01:03:52,200 I've been working with the United Nations on issues of migration and refugees. 913 01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:54,680 I mean, that's something I know. 914 01:03:54,760 --> 01:03:57,200 Um, how to deal with large numbers of people on the move. 915 01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:03,040 2016, Austria is building up to the elections. 916 01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,280 Um, I received an email 917 01:04:05,360 --> 01:04:07,480 asking me whether I would be interested 918 01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:10,240 to work on a project with Jan Marsalek. 919 01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:13,240 I didn't know who that was. 920 01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:15,680 I did not even know Wirecard. 921 01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:21,080 A few days later, we met in the famous restaurant, 922 01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:22,440 the Kafer in Munich. 923 01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:25,720 Extremely eloquent, smiling, 924 01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:29,280 the Austrian smart-ass, very smooth talker. 925 01:04:29,360 --> 01:04:33,520 He stressed that he was very interested to do a project in Libya. 926 01:04:35,760 --> 01:04:38,680 Crossing the Sahara in search of a better life, 927 01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:41,040 these migrants are bound for Europe. 928 01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:44,640 And this is where their long ride begins, 929 01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:47,280 several days' drive from the Libyan border. 930 01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:55,920 He stressed this knowledge of Libya, where he said he had been several times, 931 01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:57,600 but that his real interest 932 01:04:57,680 --> 01:05:01,440 was really to contribute to the stabilization of Libya. 933 01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:05,640 He presented himself as doing good work. 934 01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:10,960 So we agreed that he would put in 200,000 euros to finance my team, 935 01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:13,480 working with refugee camps in Libya. 936 01:05:15,720 --> 01:05:17,080 It was fantastic. We liked it. 937 01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:22,000 The relationship with Marsalek was managed by two persons. 938 01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:27,120 Wolfgang Gattringer, who used to work in the Austrian Ministry of Interior, 939 01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:32,280 and Brigadier Gustenau from the Ministry of Defense of Austria. 940 01:05:33,360 --> 01:05:36,040 Then popped up Colonel Andrey Chuprygin, 941 01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,040 the former secret-service officer from Russia. 942 01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:43,760 He is presented not only as the guy who works with Jan, 943 01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,360 but also the guy who coordinates Russian interests 944 01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:48,560 in the Middle East and North Africa. 945 01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:51,880 There should have been alarm bells. 946 01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:57,800 In mid-February, we meet Marsalek in the Prinzregentenstrasse, 947 01:05:57,880 --> 01:06:01,120 just opposite the Russian General Consulate in Munich. 948 01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:05,880 It's an empty place. It's an old building. 949 01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:09,920 Nice pieces of art. 950 01:06:21,080 --> 01:06:26,520 There is Marsalek talking to Gattringer and Gustenau and he said, 951 01:06:26,600 --> 01:06:30,800 "I want to train and equip a border-guard force 952 01:06:30,880 --> 01:06:34,240 of 15, maybe 20,000 men in Libya." 953 01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:40,200 Basically preventing people in distress from crossing the border. 954 01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:43,280 This is all very bad. 955 01:06:45,360 --> 01:06:48,280 Border security in Libya was a topic that, 956 01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:53,440 for a COO of a company like Wirecard, wasn't normal in the slightest. 957 01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:58,240 As time went on, I asked myself, "What does he want in Libya?" 958 01:06:58,320 --> 01:07:01,560 "And why does he seem to be getting support 959 01:07:01,640 --> 01:07:04,040 from within the Austrian government 960 01:07:04,120 --> 01:07:07,560 for a project that doesn't have humanitarian aims?" 961 01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:11,240 For me, then that all clicked. 962 01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:15,800 Migration is the theme which makes you win or lose elections in Europe. 963 01:07:16,400 --> 01:07:19,840 If you ignore negative trends 964 01:07:19,920 --> 01:07:23,160 or if you let immigration go unchecked, 965 01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:25,680 things will go downhill very quickly. 966 01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:29,240 Jan Marsalek was acting as the in-between 967 01:07:29,320 --> 01:07:31,920 for the Russians and for the right-wing populist parties. 968 01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:37,480 It is logical that if Russia 969 01:07:37,560 --> 01:07:39,960 wants to destabilize Europe, 970 01:07:41,040 --> 01:07:45,840 they would try to create anxiety over supposed waves of refugees 971 01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:49,720 to create a narrative that heats the debate again. 972 01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:53,720 Marsalek has very good contacts in Russia. 973 01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:59,120 That's why it's plausible that Jan Marsalek could have been trying 974 01:07:59,200 --> 01:08:01,400 to set something up for the Russians. 975 01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:09,240 My mind was going at a million miles an hour. 976 01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:10,920 It was clearly bonkers. 977 01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:15,600 The COO of a German company is not supposed to be involved 978 01:08:15,680 --> 01:08:18,520 in encouraging disruptive right-wing parties 979 01:08:18,600 --> 01:08:23,560 to capitalize on migration problems, or recruiting militiamen. 980 01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:27,240 The idea would be crazy 981 01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:30,680 were it not for the fact that I just felt it rang true. 982 01:08:51,400 --> 01:08:56,200 So Sam starts finding about all these insane Russian links. 983 01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:08,120 Now, we have to be, like, state-security-level paranoid. 984 01:09:09,120 --> 01:09:11,200 We're not even putting anything in digital. 985 01:09:11,280 --> 01:09:14,440 It all has to be handwritten, and don't talk on the phone. 986 01:09:16,440 --> 01:09:20,160 Paul heard about 28 private detectives 987 01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:22,600 who were wandering around London, following people. 988 01:09:23,400 --> 01:09:24,520 I went after 989 01:09:24,600 --> 01:09:27,840 the private investigators' spying operation. 990 01:09:27,920 --> 01:09:33,120 That led us to discovering that the person bankrolling this operation 991 01:09:33,200 --> 01:09:38,880 was a former Head of Foreign Intelligence for the Libyan transitionary government. 992 01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:41,520 Rami el-Obeidi. 993 01:09:43,480 --> 01:09:50,440 We did know that Marsalek had interests in Libya by that point. 994 01:09:53,200 --> 01:09:57,480 Whoever hears the words, "Libyan spy chief," and thinks, 995 01:09:57,560 --> 01:09:59,720 "Oh, right. Yeah. That's totally fine"? 996 01:10:01,920 --> 01:10:06,240 And so I'm sort of leaving the house looking for cameras, 997 01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:09,920 leave the office at different times, catch different trains. 998 01:10:12,480 --> 01:10:13,600 I'd be on the Tube, 999 01:10:15,200 --> 01:10:18,760 you'd reach your stop and then you wait until just before the doors close. 1000 01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:21,160 Then I'd jump out and sort of like, 1001 01:10:21,240 --> 01:10:24,160 "Did anyone else get off with me as well?" 1002 01:10:38,760 --> 01:10:42,520 That was the moment when I felt nervous about my family. 1003 01:10:44,000 --> 01:10:47,920 This is Freddy McCrum, age three days. 1004 01:10:49,440 --> 01:10:50,720 That's what you worry about. 1005 01:10:50,800 --> 01:10:53,120 Because you'd do anything to protect your children. 1006 01:10:53,720 --> 01:10:57,920 And the idea that you would put them in danger for some story... 1007 01:10:59,000 --> 01:11:00,840 I mean, who wants to do that? 1008 01:11:03,120 --> 01:11:04,120 Um... 1009 01:11:05,880 --> 01:11:08,360 It's criminal to wiretap journalists. 1010 01:11:08,440 --> 01:11:11,240 It's criminal to hack their email accounts. 1011 01:11:11,920 --> 01:11:18,440 The worst part was that this intimidation was quite successful. 1012 01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:23,520 The Financial Times had launched an internal inquiry into Dan McCrum, 1013 01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:26,760 and Wirecard made the most of this time, 1014 01:11:26,840 --> 01:11:29,360 and its market price kept rising. 1015 01:11:29,440 --> 01:11:36,040 They even got the German Chancellor to promote the company in China. 1016 01:11:36,120 --> 01:11:39,520 All this happened in those months when the Financial Times 1017 01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:42,080 didn't write anything critical of Wirecard. 1018 01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:45,680 I went through a torrid time. 1019 01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:47,240 I wanted to get back at them. 1020 01:11:48,200 --> 01:11:49,360 I was livid. 1021 01:11:50,600 --> 01:11:54,240 Soon as the investigation was over, when we get a clean bill of health, 1022 01:11:54,320 --> 01:11:56,000 I called in Paul and Dan. 1023 01:11:56,520 --> 01:11:59,520 I said, "The next story, I want you to draw blood." 1024 01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:10,400 We had to find a way to make it absolutely clear to everybody 1025 01:12:10,480 --> 01:12:12,120 that Wirecard was a fake. 1026 01:12:14,800 --> 01:12:17,400 We were angry, and there was no hanging back. 1027 01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:23,000 It was the whole enchilada. 1028 01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:26,440 Wirecard is a fake, its business isn't real, 1029 01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:28,520 and Markus Braun is lying to you. 1030 01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:31,000 And here are the documents that prove it. 1031 01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:39,920 This is how it is doing the fakery. 1032 01:12:40,440 --> 01:12:44,000 Here are the partners that don't exist. Here are the customers who don't exist. 1033 01:12:46,400 --> 01:12:50,240 Here is everything you need to switch on the blue lights, 1034 01:12:50,320 --> 01:12:53,080 go down to Wirecard HQ, and arrest everyone. 1035 01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:56,960 The Financial Times suggest 1036 01:12:57,040 --> 01:12:59,520 that you've routed billions of euros in payments 1037 01:12:59,600 --> 01:13:01,320 - to 34 names... - Mm-hmm. 1038 01:13:01,400 --> 01:13:05,600 ...through a partner company in Dubai at Al Alam Solutions. 1039 01:13:05,680 --> 01:13:07,400 According to the FT, 1040 01:13:07,480 --> 01:13:11,080 more than half of the clients have never heard of Al Alam. 1041 01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:13,120 Let me give you a clear statement here. 1042 01:13:13,200 --> 01:13:15,800 This information is not authentic, 1043 01:13:15,880 --> 01:13:18,160 how it was presented by the FT. 1044 01:13:18,240 --> 01:13:21,120 We can completely reject these allegations. 1045 01:13:24,800 --> 01:13:27,480 Dan McCrum's reporting at the Financial Times, 1046 01:13:27,560 --> 01:13:29,840 of course, made us uneasy. 1047 01:13:29,920 --> 01:13:34,360 However, I just didn't have any visibility of any transactions 1048 01:13:34,440 --> 01:13:36,880 in the Middle East or the Philippines. 1049 01:13:36,960 --> 01:13:40,560 It didn't really make sense to me that they couldn't exist. 1050 01:13:41,960 --> 01:13:45,120 It was painful because this is something you believed in. 1051 01:13:49,760 --> 01:13:53,480 We believed that we had put a hole in Wirecard 1052 01:13:53,560 --> 01:13:55,320 that would bring the business down, 1053 01:13:55,400 --> 01:13:57,560 but it didn't come crashing down. 1054 01:13:58,320 --> 01:14:03,480 But this latest evidence from the FT was difficult to ignore. 1055 01:14:03,560 --> 01:14:08,440 Now Wirecard has categorically rejected the allegations of impropriety. 1056 01:14:08,520 --> 01:14:10,160 But on October 21st, 1057 01:14:10,240 --> 01:14:13,480 Wirecard appointed KPMG to conduct a special audit, 1058 01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:19,240 just to confirm that they have not engaged in any improper accounting practices. 1059 01:14:20,920 --> 01:14:24,200 Dr. Markus Braun, you've decided 1060 01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:27,000 to carry out an external audit 1061 01:14:27,080 --> 01:14:32,200 due to the allegations that the FT have made. 1062 01:14:32,280 --> 01:14:34,760 The question is, "Why only now?" 1063 01:14:35,640 --> 01:14:37,200 Well, we reacted very quickly. 1064 01:14:37,280 --> 01:14:41,120 The newspaper article was published only over a week ago. 1065 01:14:42,560 --> 01:14:46,400 At first, Braun didn't want this inquiry. 1066 01:14:46,480 --> 01:14:50,680 We reject these allegations 100%. 1067 01:14:51,280 --> 01:14:55,480 People at Wirecard must have known that this is going to be troublesome. 1068 01:14:55,560 --> 01:14:58,160 When will the auditors present their report? 1069 01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:03,320 I don't want to jump the gun, but we think within a few months. 1070 01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:07,680 We believe we will have results very quickly. 1071 01:15:09,640 --> 01:15:11,680 Holy shit. The story's working. 1072 01:15:12,200 --> 01:15:15,720 Finally, you know, we had an impact. They haven't been able to brush it off. 1073 01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:18,040 There's been enough pressure from their investors 1074 01:15:18,120 --> 01:15:21,000 that they've had to appoint KPMG. 1075 01:15:21,080 --> 01:15:23,480 It felt like the stakes were high at that point. 1076 01:15:32,640 --> 01:15:34,480 My name is Joachim Giehl. 1077 01:15:35,280 --> 01:15:37,760 I am Markus Braun's neighbor. 1078 01:15:40,360 --> 01:15:42,640 I always had the impression 1079 01:15:42,720 --> 01:15:45,320 that this man is under a massive amount of pressure. 1080 01:15:48,520 --> 01:15:51,560 He greeted nobody as his neighbor. 1081 01:15:51,640 --> 01:15:53,800 He always just got in his car. 1082 01:15:53,880 --> 01:15:55,840 No hello, no nothing. 1083 01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:05,960 There was one day, around 8:30 p.m., 1084 01:16:06,040 --> 01:16:09,000 I parked my car in the garage. 1085 01:16:09,600 --> 01:16:15,200 It was dark, and I saw Markus Braun at the entrance to our building. 1086 01:16:17,040 --> 01:16:21,920 I saw him in the lamplight, and he looked extremely tense. 1087 01:16:23,920 --> 01:16:28,960 He was surrounded by some men whom I didn't recognize. 1088 01:16:31,760 --> 01:16:33,240 They seemed out of place. 1089 01:16:35,200 --> 01:16:37,600 They didn't look like businesspeople. 1090 01:16:37,680 --> 01:16:43,000 They looked like people who work as security, bodyguards, 1091 01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:45,280 a group of thugs... 1092 01:16:45,360 --> 01:16:47,120 ...or people like that. 1093 01:16:48,680 --> 01:16:52,240 They didn't look like they were there to protect him. 1094 01:16:52,320 --> 01:16:56,560 Rather, I thought they were there... 1095 01:16:58,200 --> 01:16:59,360 ...to do a job. 1096 01:17:06,800 --> 01:17:09,920 Dr. Markus Braun and Jan Marsalek's relationship 1097 01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:11,800 definitely deteriorated. 1098 01:17:13,760 --> 01:17:16,120 In December 2019, 1099 01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:19,080 we had a Christmas party for our team, 1100 01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:23,200 and Jan Marsalek arrived somewhat unexpectedly. 1101 01:17:24,520 --> 01:17:27,400 And then he said... in a smiling fashion, 1102 01:17:27,480 --> 01:17:31,880 "Martin, if you stole 100,000 from the company, 1103 01:17:31,960 --> 01:17:34,120 I would not have respect for you." 1104 01:17:34,200 --> 01:17:36,240 "If you're gonna steal it from the company, 1105 01:17:36,320 --> 01:17:37,960 you have to steal millions, 1106 01:17:38,040 --> 01:17:39,600 hundreds of millions." 1107 01:17:43,480 --> 01:17:45,560 While this was happening, 1108 01:17:45,640 --> 01:17:48,560 Braun comes up with this fantastic idea. 1109 01:17:50,280 --> 01:17:51,640 His biggest yet. 1110 01:17:52,600 --> 01:17:55,640 The plan was to take over Deutsche Bank, 1111 01:17:55,720 --> 01:17:57,520 Germany's biggest bank. 1112 01:17:59,240 --> 01:18:01,640 It was called "Project Panther," 1113 01:18:01,720 --> 01:18:04,360 a plan for a hostile takeover. 1114 01:18:04,960 --> 01:18:09,440 A large consulting company put a document together 1115 01:18:09,520 --> 01:18:12,920 which showed how it could make sense 1116 01:18:13,000 --> 01:18:15,480 to merge an old bank with a new tech company. 1117 01:18:17,080 --> 01:18:20,760 The "Wirebank," or whatever it would have been called. 1118 01:18:22,320 --> 01:18:24,760 The idea was 1119 01:18:24,840 --> 01:18:27,760 if you merged these two companies, 1120 01:18:27,840 --> 01:18:31,920 with the Deutsche Bank balance being so much bigger than Wirecard's, 1121 01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:36,440 that then maybe the fraud at Wirecard would somehow get swept under the rug. 1122 01:18:38,120 --> 01:18:40,600 If you've got a bank like Deutsche Bank, 1123 01:18:40,680 --> 01:18:44,040 you can hide a lot of bad numbers inside a bank that big. 1124 01:18:45,400 --> 01:18:47,080 It's sort of genius, really. 1125 01:18:47,760 --> 01:18:49,880 It's a bit like instead of having a getaway car, 1126 01:18:49,960 --> 01:18:52,000 it's just gone into the bank and taken over. 1127 01:18:53,880 --> 01:18:55,280 And if they'd done that, you know, 1128 01:18:55,360 --> 01:18:58,080 Markus Braun would have been the genius financier, 1129 01:18:58,160 --> 01:19:01,640 who was now running one of the world's largest financial institutions. 1130 01:19:04,080 --> 01:19:07,920 It was essentially Braun's last roll of the dice. 1131 01:19:11,240 --> 01:19:14,320 Wirecard's existing auditors, EY, 1132 01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:19,480 were taking extra steps to check that 1.9 billion of cash, 1133 01:19:19,560 --> 01:19:23,560 which Wirecard claimed, actually existed. 1134 01:19:24,280 --> 01:19:26,120 Wirecard essentially said 1135 01:19:26,200 --> 01:19:31,720 that 1.9 billion euros was sitting in two Philippine banks. 1136 01:19:32,320 --> 01:19:35,400 On this occasion, the auditors wanted real proof 1137 01:19:35,480 --> 01:19:39,800 that Wirecard had access to the money it claimed, 1138 01:19:39,880 --> 01:19:43,800 which, of course, Wirecard couldn't do because the money didn't exist. 1139 01:19:44,400 --> 01:19:49,280 So everybody wanted to know, would EY find out the truth? 1140 01:20:07,040 --> 01:20:09,560 That night, I couldn't sleep... 1141 01:20:10,720 --> 01:20:12,640 because I wanted to be prepared. 1142 01:20:14,920 --> 01:20:18,360 Whatever I could get my hands on, as far as shares of Wirecard, 1143 01:20:18,440 --> 01:20:22,560 I got it because, you know, in my gut, I knew it was going to happen that day. 1144 01:20:24,520 --> 01:20:28,440 We got close to 100 million at the, you know, peak of Wirecard 1145 01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:31,520 until I ran out of shares to short. 1146 01:20:39,600 --> 01:20:40,760 That morning, 1147 01:20:40,840 --> 01:20:44,320 I'm up at six o'clock waiting for something to happen. 1148 01:20:45,360 --> 01:20:47,280 Suddenly this announcement pops up. 1149 01:20:47,960 --> 01:20:52,960 Auditors can no longer locate €1.9 billion 1150 01:20:53,040 --> 01:20:55,680 that are said to be in escrow accounts in Asia. 1151 01:20:55,760 --> 01:20:57,920 The two banks in the Philippines 1152 01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:00,440 where the €1.9 billion was supposed to be 1153 01:21:00,520 --> 01:21:02,920 said today that they had no business relations 1154 01:21:03,000 --> 01:21:04,680 with the payments processor. 1155 01:21:04,760 --> 01:21:06,240 The documents were faked. 1156 01:21:07,600 --> 01:21:12,400 As soon as I saw that, I just knew it's completely game over. 1157 01:21:16,560 --> 01:21:19,800 The share price crashes. The short sellers can all see it. 1158 01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:22,720 They start selling every single Wirecard share 1159 01:21:22,800 --> 01:21:25,520 they can get their hands on and finally make a fortune from it. 1160 01:21:25,600 --> 01:21:28,800 How do you simply miss a couple of billion dollars? 1161 01:21:29,400 --> 01:21:34,160 The share price plunged by 70%. 1162 01:21:34,240 --> 01:21:35,720 Fucking hell. We did it! 1163 01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:37,360 You know... 1164 01:21:37,440 --> 01:21:38,600 ...I mean, we did it. 1165 01:21:38,680 --> 01:21:40,680 We finally got those bastards. 1166 01:21:47,520 --> 01:21:49,560 When you make money, obviously it's great. 1167 01:21:49,640 --> 01:21:52,560 You know, we're happy for our investors and it's a huge win. 1168 01:21:53,240 --> 01:21:56,160 Our satisfaction, the excitement is in the hunt, 1169 01:21:56,240 --> 01:21:58,400 but Wirecard was our biggest winner, 1170 01:21:58,480 --> 01:22:03,280 and I suspect it'll be our biggest winner, um, for a long while. 1171 01:22:05,360 --> 01:22:07,520 Ladies and gentlemen, 1172 01:22:07,600 --> 01:22:10,720 on behalf of the management board of Wirecard, 1173 01:22:10,800 --> 01:22:12,920 I would like to give the following explanation. 1174 01:22:13,000 --> 01:22:15,960 The press conference that night was like The Muppet Show. 1175 01:22:17,400 --> 01:22:19,480 Braun reads from the teleprompter. 1176 01:22:20,920 --> 01:22:23,040 The death sentence has already been handed out, 1177 01:22:23,120 --> 01:22:27,680 and he's still making it seem as if he's going to announce 1178 01:22:27,760 --> 01:22:30,760 an amazing quarterly report next month. 1179 01:22:31,360 --> 01:22:36,120 Right now, it cannot be ruled out that Wirecard 1180 01:22:36,200 --> 01:22:39,520 has become the damaged party 1181 01:22:39,600 --> 01:22:43,040 in a fraud case of considerable proportions. 1182 01:22:44,640 --> 01:22:45,960 Within a week, 1183 01:22:46,040 --> 01:22:49,120 Wirecard has been placed into administration. It's gone bust. 1184 01:22:49,200 --> 01:22:51,400 Former CEO of Wirecard has been arrested 1185 01:22:51,480 --> 01:22:53,760 on suspicion of falsifying accounts. 1186 01:22:53,840 --> 01:22:56,000 And Markus Braun has been arrested. 1187 01:22:57,000 --> 01:22:59,760 But Jan Marsalek just disappears. 1188 01:23:01,680 --> 01:23:05,800 Where is the COO of the insolvent payment processor, 1189 01:23:05,880 --> 01:23:08,760 Wirecard, the Austrian, Jan Marsalek? 1190 01:23:10,840 --> 01:23:14,080 Wirecard's former Chief Operating Officer, Jan Marsalek 1191 01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:16,360 may have returned to the Philippines. 1192 01:23:17,040 --> 01:23:19,480 He arrived on June 23. 1193 01:23:19,560 --> 01:23:20,960 That was two days ago 1194 01:23:21,040 --> 01:23:24,080 and left yesterday morning bound for China. 1195 01:23:26,200 --> 01:23:28,760 An agent always has an escape route. 1196 01:23:30,840 --> 01:23:35,960 We knew that Marsalek was in the office until that Friday afternoon. 1197 01:23:36,600 --> 01:23:38,920 He supposedly said 1198 01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:41,960 he had to go to the Philippines to clear the whole thing up. 1199 01:23:44,400 --> 01:23:48,360 He went for dinner with Martin W. that evening. 1200 01:23:50,360 --> 01:23:53,000 Martin W., who he knew from the Prinzregentenstrasse 1201 01:23:53,080 --> 01:23:56,120 and who used to be in the Austrian secret service 1202 01:23:56,200 --> 01:24:00,320 together with an Austrian, right-wing politician 1203 01:24:00,400 --> 01:24:02,240 booked Marsalek a flight. 1204 01:24:03,720 --> 01:24:07,360 Marsalek paid close to €8,000 in cash... 1205 01:24:08,920 --> 01:24:10,760 and then his trail disappeared. 1206 01:24:13,840 --> 01:24:15,400 He didn't go to the Philippines. 1207 01:24:15,480 --> 01:24:16,480 It doesn't make sense. 1208 01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:21,280 He couldn't have entered the country because of quarantine regulations. 1209 01:24:22,480 --> 01:24:25,160 There are databases where you can check flight data. 1210 01:24:25,840 --> 01:24:31,000 Since 2015, he flew at least 60 times to Russia. 1211 01:24:31,520 --> 01:24:33,920 And there was one flight 1212 01:24:34,000 --> 01:24:38,800 from a small airport near Vienna to Minsk. 1213 01:24:41,040 --> 01:24:42,480 It's not far from Moscow. 1214 01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:48,320 The border to Russia is not controlled, and that's where the trail is lost. 1215 01:24:49,520 --> 01:24:52,120 After that, it's just rumors. 1216 01:24:56,040 --> 01:24:57,960 We don't know for certain if Marsalek 1217 01:24:58,040 --> 01:25:01,400 was actually a secret-service informant or not. 1218 01:25:03,480 --> 01:25:05,960 Jan Marsalek was very well-connected 1219 01:25:06,040 --> 01:25:08,680 in the secret service parallel world, 1220 01:25:08,760 --> 01:25:12,120 and that's why I think he won't be that easy to find. 1221 01:25:15,760 --> 01:25:18,360 We know that he's online occasionally 1222 01:25:18,440 --> 01:25:22,080 via an old Telegram account. 1223 01:25:24,800 --> 01:25:26,280 I can check again. 1224 01:25:29,080 --> 01:25:33,880 He's been online every few months. 1225 01:25:35,480 --> 01:25:40,880 The last time was on May 27, 2021. 1226 01:25:48,520 --> 01:25:50,760 The German parliament has started 1227 01:25:50,840 --> 01:25:52,960 a political inquiry into Wirecard, 1228 01:25:53,040 --> 01:25:55,960 one of the biggest scandals of the German republic. 1229 01:25:56,040 --> 01:26:00,760 A financial disaster for those who invested their money in Wirecard. 1230 01:26:02,360 --> 01:26:07,440 It was the first DAX-listed company to go bust. 1231 01:26:20,280 --> 01:26:23,520 I think that Wirecard's inner circle 1232 01:26:23,600 --> 01:26:27,440 who knew what was really going on was very small. 1233 01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:29,720 Certainly Marsalek. 1234 01:26:30,600 --> 01:26:34,720 The fascinating question is, "What did Braun know about all this?" 1235 01:26:43,400 --> 01:26:46,040 He wasn't emotional. He was very tense. 1236 01:26:47,320 --> 01:26:50,120 And then he gave a short opening statement. 1237 01:26:51,000 --> 01:26:55,120 "All I can say... is we were all deceived." 1238 01:26:56,160 --> 01:26:57,360 "I'm a victim." 1239 01:26:58,720 --> 01:27:02,000 And then his lawyer said he won't answer any further questions. 1240 01:27:02,680 --> 01:27:07,080 He really sat there for three hours and didn't answer. 1241 01:27:10,080 --> 01:27:12,800 Reliving the whole experience now, 1242 01:27:12,880 --> 01:27:15,840 I feel naive in not having seen certain things. 1243 01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:18,560 I do believe, personally, 1244 01:27:18,640 --> 01:27:23,360 that there's a possibility he did not know what Jan Marsalek was doing, 1245 01:27:24,480 --> 01:27:27,400 but I think it was his responsibility to know. 1246 01:27:29,920 --> 01:27:34,160 I think so far, we only know the tip of the iceberg. 1247 01:27:34,240 --> 01:27:39,400 Unless Jan Marsalek turns up somewhere and breaks his silence, 1248 01:27:39,480 --> 01:27:41,880 only then will we get the full story. 1249 01:27:44,720 --> 01:27:47,240 If Jan's out there, I'd love to talk to him. 1250 01:27:47,320 --> 01:27:50,040 I mean, I've spent years trying to get inside his head. 1251 01:27:52,160 --> 01:27:55,040 Who was it who was committing the fraud within? 1252 01:27:55,120 --> 01:27:58,200 You know, what did he and Markus Braun talk about? 1253 01:27:58,720 --> 01:28:01,520 Was it a relief when it came crashing down? 1254 01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:05,840 That's kind of interesting, right?