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A business partner and close confidant of Jan Marsalek have for the first time publicly spoke about his relationship with the fugitive former Wirecard director during a trial in Singapore about his role in the collapse of the German payment company.
James Henry O’Sullivan, a 50-year-old British national who ran various companies in Asia with close ties with Wirecard, is the argument of accusation of his Singaporean co-suspect to commit fraud by falsifying documents.
The case in Singapore includes a series of Escrow accounts whose Auditors of Wirecard were told that hundreds of millions of euros contain cash reserves that have been built up by the outsourced activities of the company in Asia.
In June 2020, Wirecard announced that € 1.9 billion reportedly did not exist on the accounts. The company then collapsed in one of the largest accounting scandals in Europe.
O’Sullivan gave evidence on Monday and said that he had met Marsalek for the first time in Vienna at the end of 2009 or early 2010, where they had discussed a legal dispute between Wirecard and companies connected to O’Sullivan.
Over the years, the couple regularly saw each other to discuss and socialize things, often in Monaco, Munich or Singapore. On one occasion, Maralek joined O’Sullivan on a New Year’s ski trip in Italy to discuss an investment in India.
When asked whether work meetings would always come up with socializing, O’Sullivan replied: “Very bad”.
O’Sullivan described Marsalek as “a very serious intelligent businessman” and “somewhat socially awkward”.
“His almost dysfunctional clumsiness has been added to the mysticism of the personality and I think he also played on that,” said O’Sullivan. “He became just as much friend for me as he could become a friend.”
O’Sullivan added that Marsalek encouraged him shortly after they met, all their communication through Telegram, the very secret messages app. He said that when Marsalek disappeared as soon as the wire fraud was exposed in 2020, all their telegram messages disappeared.
O’Sullivan told the court on Monday that Marsalek seemed to show on one opportunity that he had external access to the phone of a journalist, including their messages, contacts and photos.
On another occasion, O’Sullivan said that Marsalek presented him a stack of 12 cm printed WhatsApp chat messages. He claimed that they were the communication of a short seller with other investors and journalists who had taken over his team from researchers.
Marsalek has since been exposed as a ringmaster for a team of Russian spies that are active throughout Europe. O’Sullivan said that the director had carried out several studies into short sellers, investors and journalists he considered enemies of Wirecard.
He added that Marsalek once gave him a few mobile phones for his own use that he claimed were developed by the Israeli espionage agency Mossad and he described as “the most safe in the world”.
O’Sullivan was arrested in Singapore in 2021 and released on S $ 150,000 bail.
He said on Monday that the officer who led the investigation warned him that he would be “the Nick Leeson of his generation”, in reference to the British financier that Barings Bank brought down in Singapore 30 years ago this month.
He added that she also compared him with Jimmy Savile, the British celebrity that was exposed after his death as a productive pedophile.
Tito Isaac, defensive O’Sullivan, said that the investigation was “predetermined and misled” and that his client denied the falsification of his co -suspect of documents.
“The nature of Mr O’Sullivan’s handling with the Wirecard Group has been misunderstood and incorrectly chartered, and the evidence presented to the court remains incomplete so far,” Isaac said.
The co -suspect of O’Sullivan, Shan Rajaratnam, was a director of secretarial company Citadelle Corporate Services. The 61-year-old Singaporean testified in an earlier period of the process.
O’Sullivan is confronted with five charges and Rajaratnam 13, each with regard to specific fraudulent transactions and wearing a maximum of 10 years in prison and fines.
Public Prosecutors claim that O’Sullivan instructed Rajaratnam to falsify documents and send letters the impression that his company, Citadelle, held hundreds of millions of euros on behalf of Wirecard in Escrow accounts when there was no money. In some cases, the bank accounts themselves were fake.
The charges relate to the paperwork that Rajaratnam sent between March 2016 and March 2018 and that claimed to show hundreds of millions of euros that are supervised by Citadelle on behalf of Wirecard in bank accounts in Singaporesis.
Prosecutors claim that Rajaratnam sent the first fake letters in 2016 under instructions from Marsalek to mislead the Wirecard auditors at EY. The lawyer of Rajaratnam, Megan Chia of Tan Rajah & Cheah, has denied that he had the intention to cheat.
The case of the public prosecutor contains 53 documents collected from the laptop and telephone from Rajaratnam, including letters, E emails and telegram messages.
The process will continue in the coming weeks of March.