Wirecard accounting scandal may have Australian connection

Police are yet to discover whether the Australian arm of payments processor Wirecard is implicated in an accounting scandal.

A USB stick at the headquarters of Singapore Police’s Commercial Affairs Department may hold the answer to the question of whether the Australian arm of embattled payments processor Wirecard is implicated in an accounting scandal that has engulfed the German-listed group.

It holds the accounts of Wirecard Australia A&I, one of the two companies Wirecard runs locally.

But in legal paperwork filed with the Singapore High Court this week, police revealed they have not looked at the file.

That is partly because the company is not one of six Wirecard subsidiaries the CAD told the court it was specifically investigating.

Nor are Singapore police looking into the company’s New Zealand subsidiary, which in turn owns a second Australian company, Wirecard Australia, even though the Kiwi group was among those where financial reports were allegedly altered by accounting boss Edo Kurniawan — an accusation the group has strenuously denied.

But Wirecard Australia A&I is not the only local link to an unfolding drama in Singapore and Wirecard’s home town, Munich, that in the past week has seen the company fail in a bid to crimp the CAD’s ongoing investigation amid ongoing turmoil for staff.

The documents, filed by Singapore’s Attorney-General on behalf of the CAD, also reveal that Wirecard subsidiary Aprisma, a key technology partner of ANZ’s Indonesian bank, most of which it has recently sold, is under investigation by police.

As The Weekend Australian has previously reported, Wirecard also provides infrastructure for ANZ’s prepaid travel card business, which was last year hit by a $2.5 million fraud that has the hallmarks of being an inside job.

Separately, The Weekend Australian can today reveal that Wirecard’s Queensland-based sales agent, Don Moffatt, was until late 2017 in business with businessman Wayne Myers, who was last month jailed for 2½ years, with a minimum of six months, over his role in corruption at Ipswich City Council.

Mr Moffatt was also named in a 2016 report by a group of short-sellers calling themselves Zatarra Research as being behind a mysterious offshore payments processor called Ezytrans and linked to a string of explicit pornographic websites.

He told The Weekend Australian the Zatarra report was “from a number of years ago and there’s a number of inaccuracies in it”, but said questions about it should be put to Wirecard.

However, Mr Moffatt said he “knew and worked with” Myers.

“Myersy’s having a bit of a holiday at the moment because of some issues to do with public ­corruption,” Mr Moffatt said.

“I wasn’t aware of any of that until he was charged.”

The Weekend Australian asked Wirecard’s Germany-based spokeswoman, Jana Tilz, a series of detailed questions about the ­allegations in the Zatarra report, the Singapore investigation and apparent contradictions between what the court there has been told and previous statements the company has given to this newspaper and the market.

In response, London-based Herbert Smith Freehills partner Alan Watts said The Weekend Australian’s previous reporting “contained certain inaccuracies (in particular in connection with certain client relationships)” but did not specify what they were.

He said the Zatarra report had been “completely refuted” and Wirecard was “co-operating fully with all public authorities in order to ensure the fastest possible ­process”.

Meanwhile, investigations are under way in both Singapore and Wirecard’s native Germany.

While German regulator BaFin has focused on short-sellers and the British newspaper that broke news of fraud allegations against Mr Kurniawan, this week’s Singapore court proceedings revealed police are investigating six individuals they suspect were involved in “arrestable offences” involving “forgeries, falsified documents, money-laundering, and the ‘round-tripping’ of funds to support false transactions that were believed to have taken place between 2014 and 2018”.

In addition to Mr Kurniawan, the company officers named by the police are Wirecard Asia head of finance Irene Chai Ai Lim, international finance manager James Wardhana, managing director Ng Fook Sun, Singapore managing director Jeffry Ho Kok Hoong and Wirecard executive vice-president of payment services, Grigory Kuznetsov.

Monday’s court proceedings also confirmed The Australian’s February 12 report that Mr Kurniawan was in the wind.

The CAD complained that it was not until February 22 that ­Wirecard admitted it “lost contact” with Mr Kurniawan “since about February 9”.

However, Mr Watts said Mr Kurniawan was on holiday until last Friday “and has been suspended from work until the end of the external investigation”.

“He has been available to his supervisor since the end of his leave,” he said. “The internal investigation, which was concluded at the end of February, refuted the allegations of criminal conduct made by Mr Kurniawan.”