Jan Marsalek

analysisAccording to the Federal Criminal Police Office, Jan Marsalek worked at Wirecard AG from January 2000 as a project manager for payment systems and sat on the management board from February 2010 to June 2020; as chief operating officer he was responsible for all operations including sales and, from at least 2015, chiefly for the Asian business and the third-party acquiring business. A registry aggregator links him in the German register to Wirecard AG, Click2Pay, Wirecard Global Sales, Wirecard Sales International Holding and Wirecard Technologies and to the deleted Trustpay International AG and Wirecard Technologies AG, without naming his role in each. An extract from an EY compliance check reproduced in the special investigators' report records his appointment as a director of E-Credit Plus Pte. Ltd., the later Wirecard Asia Pte. Ltd., on 18 March 2010; the date is legible only in a word-by-word recognition table, and the check's own source for the appointment is not given. ^{1 2 3}

analysisIreland's Corporate Enforcement Authority reports that the liquidators of Wirecard UK & Ireland Limited recommended disqualifying its two remaining directors, Marsalek (spelt "Marsalak"), its chief executive and the group's chief operating officer, and Markus-Konrad Fuchs, its sales director and the group's head of sales and acquiring. Because of the grave nature of the allegations the authority declined to offer them undertakings and had the liquidators seek disqualification in the High Court; Fuchs was disqualified for nine years, while the case against Marsalek was adjourned with liberty to re-enter because he could not be served. ⁴

analysisThe Munich I public prosecutor is investigating Marsalek on suspicion of professional gang fraud, aggravated breach of trust and other offences, and the Federal Criminal Police Office and Munich police have issued a public appeal for his arrest and consider it very likely that he is abroad; the office also suspects him of having bought shares in a company at an inflated price, contrary to his duties to the group. These are suspicions, not charges proved in court. A sanctions and wanted-persons database repeats the official notices, including INTERPOL's red notices, with the alternative names Alexander Michaelowitsch Nelidov and German Baschenow recorded in them. ^{1 2}

analysisAn investigation published on 18 July 2020 by an investigative outlet with two partner media, based on Russian and Belarusian border data, reported that Marsalek entered Belarus by private jet in the first minutes of 19 June 2020 and, according to the records, never left, and that Philippine records of a trip to Manila on 23 June had been a red herring. A second investigation, published on 19 July 2022 with a German newspaper, reported that a request for special handling at Minsk airport attached a copy of a Grenadian diplomatic passport in his name, and that his escape was organised by Martin Weiss, a former head of operations of Austria's BVT intelligence agency, and the former Freedom Party MP Thomas Schellenbacher, who chartered the jet. These are media findings with no official confirmation or response from the persons named in the record. He remains wanted: the Federal Criminal Police Office asks for information on his whereabouts since June 2020, and a 2024 order of the Bavarian Supreme Regional Court lists him as of unknown whereabouts. ^{3 1 4 5}

analysisThe 2020 investigation reported that Marsalek travelled to Russia more than 60 times in ten years, that the FSB border service refused to let him leave Moscow on a private jet on 15 September 2017 and that an FSB database tracked his international trips from 2015 to 2018, which the outlet interprets as a special interest of the FSB; it also reported that from 2015 he pursued projects in Libya with a Russian adviser whom, according to the outlet, Western intelligence services believe to be a former senior GRU officer; no response from Marsalek to that account is in the record. The 2022 investigation reported that he lives in Moscow under FSB protection, acquired Russian citizenship in 2021 and later took the identity of "German Bazhenov", which the outlet could only partly verify; it notes that he has consistently denied any links with Russian intelligence. ^{1 2}

analysisIn sentencing remarks of 12 May 2025 in R v Roussev and others at the Central Criminal Court, a case of conspiracy to spy for Russia, the judge recorded the prosecution's case that the Russian agent using the alias "Rupert Ticz" was Marsalek, who had fled Germany to avoid arrest for fraud, and that his messages to Orlin Roussev referred to the GRU, FSB and KGB; Roussev's plea did not accept the identification but agreed it did not matter. The remarks record that in February 2022 Marsalek messaged Roussev about applying for EUR 1 million as a "search and capture budget" for a target, evidence of substantial cryptocurrency payments from Marsalek to Roussev, and discussions in 2021 about surveilling the investigative journalist Christo Grozev and kidnapping him to Moscow. ³