Balance sheet scandal at Wirecard: Singapore accuses former trustee

The Singapore authorities have filed a first charge in the Wirecard scandal raised. In the city-state, the head of Citadelle Corporate Services has been charged with falsifying documents. This emerges from the court papers that are available to the AFP news agency.

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The 54-year-old R. Shanmugaratnam is said to have submitted letters in 2016 and 2017 in which he, as a trustee, certified Wirecard balances in the amount of EUR 30 million to EUR 177 million. However, the accounts were empty, the letters were written “with fraudulent intent”, the prosecution says.

Filipino authorities await long investigation

Meanwhile, the investigation into the Philippines will continue for months, according to the judicial authorities. The relevant anti-money laundering agency (AMLC) of the government in Manila is now checking 50 people and organizations in connection with the scandal, said AMLC director Mel Racela of the German press agency. “We’ll turn every stone over.”

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The payment service provider Wirecard filed for bankruptcy at the end of June. Previously, the Dax company had to admit that the funds listed in the balance sheet of EUR 1.9 billion, which were supposed to be in Asian bank accounts, could not be found. The missing money was supposed to be in Filipino escrow accounts; a Filipino lawyer had only taken over the escrow mandate from a Singapore company last November. In June it turned out that neither the billions nor the trust accounts existed.

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