Frankfurt (AFP)

The financial scandal of the German company Wirecard turns into a spy novel: the businessman at the center of the scandal, an Austrian on the run, is suspected of links with various intelligence services and has carefully erased his traces.

This man, Jan Marsalek, has so far refused to surrender to the German justice system which issued an arrest warrant against him for fraud and forgery of balance sheet.

Former chief operating officer of online payments provider, he is suspected of being involved in one of the biggest stock market earthquakes in German history, with the discovery last month of fictitious accounts amounting to 1.9 billion d euros supposed to belong to Wirecard in the Philippines and under the responsibility of the now volatilized businessman.

Now, almost every day brings its share of revelations about the underside of this incredible affair.

He was thus linked to the Austrian intelligence services (BVT) and informed the Austrian far-right party in that country, the FPÖ, by repeatedly transmitting confidential information from the internal security services and the Ministry of the Interior , says the Austrian daily Die Presse.

Everything would have gone through an intermediary, Johann Gudenus, a relative of the head of the FPÖ at the time, who got his information from an old friend, who himself got it from a "Jan from BVT".

According to the newspaper, it was Jan Marsalek whose links with the BVT date from Wirecard's beginnings. Agents from this office had helped verify the creditworthiness of online porn sites, an area in which Wirecard started operating in 1999.

On Thursday, the current head of the FPÖ, Nobert Hofer, said he did not know Mr. Marsalek.

- Russian poison -

At the same time, Mr. Marsalek distinguished himself in the United Kingdom in 2018 by saying that he had secret documents on the use of a Russian toxic weapon there.

Worthy of a character in the novels of John the Square, he would have done so to boast to London business contacts of his supposed links to the British intelligence services, the Financial Times revealed.

These documents, pared by the daily, included the formula of a component used in the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergueï Skripal and his daughter in the south of England in March of the same year.

These details shed new light on the strange methods of the leader who contributed to the meteoric rise of the young fintech.

Mr. Marsalek joined the Wirecard Management Board in the early 2000s, only 30 years old and without a high school diploma, but with great charisma, reports the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Money quickly flowed and Wirecard, strong with its 6,000 employees, was once the "darling" of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange where it was worth up to 23 billion euros.

- "Naked women and champagne" -

Concerning his private life, the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung evokes luxurious parties organized between Kitzbühel and Moscow, having for decoration "naked women, champagne and big bundles of money".

Relatives of Mr. Marsalek argue that he embezzled a sum of "hundreds of millions of euros" from Wirecard's coffers and that he maintains "close contacts with intelligence agents from various countries", according to Süddeutsche Zeitung.

These supposed relationships may have helped him organize his escape, the German press suspecting him of having acquired a false identity to better disappear in the wild.

Its trace is officially lost in the Philippines, where the pot-aux-roses was discovered.

According to data recorded by the Philippine immigration service, the Austrian entered Cebu on June 23 - the day after his eviction from Wirecard - and left the next day to go to China.

But Filipino Secretary of State for Justice Menardo Guevarra denied his presence in his country on these dates and apparently never arrived in China.

An investigation was opened against officers of the Philippine immigration services accused of having issued false documents for his benefit.

© 2020 AFP