The Wirecard scandal in brief: Wirecard AG, a German payments company based in Aschheim near Munich that had risen into the DAX, told the market on 22 June 2020 that €1.9 billion of trust-account cash it had reported as an asset probably did not exist [S1]. Its auditor had been unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence for the balance [S2]. Wirecard applied for insolvency on 25 June 2020 [S3]. Munich prosecutors charged former CEO Markus Braun, who denies the allegations; his trial has run since December 2022 with no verdict as of October 2026 [S5][S6]. Former COO Jan Marsalek is a fugitive [S7].

Key facts

  • Company: Wirecard AG, payments processor founded in 1999, Aschheim near Munich; rose into the DAX 30 [S8][S5]
  • Missing money: €1.9 billion in trust-account balances, about a quarter of the balance sheet [S1][S2]
  • Admission: 22 June 2020 board statement; insolvency application 25 June 2020 [S1][S3]
  • Charges: indictment filed March 2022 (474 pages) against Braun and others; allegations include fraud, breach of trust and market manipulation [S5]
  • Trial: Munich I Regional Court since December 2022; Braun denies all charges; no verdict as of October 2026 [S6][S9]
  • Fugitive: Jan Marsalek, wanted on a warrant dated 22 June 2020 [S7]
  • Audit oversight: APAS sanctioned the audit firm and five auditors on 31 March 2023 [S10]

Case file: Wirecard. Sources linked at the end as [S#]. Charges and the indictment are allegations; Markus Braun is presumed innocent and denies the charges. General information only, not financial advice.

The cash an auditor couldn’t see

Cash is usually the easiest line on a balance sheet to audit. You write to the bank, the bank writes back to you, and the number either matches or it doesn’t.

At Wirecard the biggest cash balance wasn’t sitting in Wirecard’s own bank accounts. It was held in trust accounts tied to what the company called Third Party Acquiring, or TPA: partner businesses that processed card payments for merchants and passed commissions back to Wirecard [S1][S5]. According to the indictment, the partners were based in Dubai, the Philippines and Singapore [S5].

Red flag: cash you can only see through someone else. When a large share of a company’s cash sits with a trustee you don’t appoint, in accounts you can’t confirm directly, the audit evidence is only as good as the trustee.

Years of warnings

From 2015 the Financial Times published reporting questioning Wirecard’s accounts, including a 2019 report that 33 clients generated commission equal to 45% of a quarter’s EBITDA [S11]. Wirecard disputed the reporting [S11]. In February 2019 Germany’s financial regulator BaFin banned new short positions in Wirecard shares for two months [S12].

The special audit

Under pressure, Wirecard commissioned KPMG to run a special investigation. Its report, dated 27 April 2020, said key materials had not been made available. On the TPA trust funds, KPMG wrote that balances “could be supported by balance confirmations from Trustee 1”, but bank confirmations and statements “were not submitted”, and payments “could not be verified by KPMG on the basis of account statements” [S13]. KPMG said it could “neither make a statement” on parts of the business, describing an “obstacle to the investigation” [S13].

Wirecard’s announcement the next day said: “Incriminating evidence for the public allegations of balance sheet forgery has not been identified” [S14].

Red flag: the confirmation that comes from the client. A balance confirmation the auditor can’t trace back to a real bank is a piece of paper, not evidence.

June 2020

Wirecard postponed its 2019 accounts more than once [S14][S2]. On 18 June 2020 it announced that its auditor could not obtain sufficient audit evidence for €1.9 billion of cash, and that “There are indications that spurious balance confirmations” had been provided “in order to deceive the auditor” [S2]. Around €2 billion of loans could be terminated as a result [S2]. Marsalek was removed from the board the same day [S8].

On 22 June the board said there was a “prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion EUR do not exist” [S1]. The BBC reported that the Philippine central bank said none of the money appeared to have entered the country’s financial system [S15]. On 25 June Wirecard applied to the Munich local court for insolvency, citing “impending insolvency and over-indebtedness” [S3].

The charges

Munich prosecutors allege that TPA revenues were booked as receivables or as trust balances in Singapore that “did not actually exist”, that confirmations were forged, and that those involved knew of losses by the end of 2015 at the latest [S5]. They allege lenders and bond investors were induced to provide about €1.7 billion in loans and €1.4 billion in bonds [S5]. These are allegations. The court admitted the indictment unchanged on 21 September 2022 [S16]. Braun has been in custody since July 2020 and denies the charges [S6].

A German parliamentary inquiry examined the case and published its final report in June 2021 [S17]. In 2025 a UK prosecution of a Russian spy ring found its leader “received his instructions from Jan Marsalek, who was acting as the intermediary for the Russian Intelligence Services”, according to the Crown Prosecution Service [S18].

The auditor’s sanction

On 31 March 2023 Germany’s audit oversight body, APAS, found breaches of professional duties in the audits for 2016 to 2018. It fined the audit firm €500,000, fined five individual auditors between €23,000 and €300,000, and barred the firm from accepting new public-interest audit clients for two years [S10].

What an auditor takes from this

Confirm cash directly with the bank, from the bank. Be most sceptical where the money is furthest away and the documents come through management. And when an independent investigator says it couldn’t get the evidence, treat that as an answer.

Further reading

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Sources

General information only, not financial advice. Markus Braun denies the charges and is presumed innocent; no verdict has been reached.