Singapore police raid Wirecard premises as probe into alleged ‘irregularities’ steps up

Police in Singapore have raided the local offices of Wirecard after an employee at the German fintech firm alleged that fellow staff were responsible for “forgery” and “accounting irregularities,” the Financial Times has reported.

A spokesperson for the force told the newspaper that officers “raided the premises of Wirecard in Singapore today,” without giving any further details.

Wirecard stand at the Internet World Fair 2017 in Munich / Photo credit: Ordercrazy

A Wirecard spokesperson confirmed to Tech in Asia that the company “met with Singapore law enforcement” at its office in the city-state “to assist in [the police’s] investigation.”

They continued, “We reiterate that the defamatory accusations made by the Financial Times against employees of Wirecard are unfounded. We intend to continue to cooperate with the Singapore police, and pledge to complete our internal inquiry and disclose these findings to the public. We will also pursue all our legal avenues to vindicate Wirecard of the false and defamatory allegations.”

Earlier this month, the Times reported that an investigation by Singaporean law firm Rajah & Tann, commissioned by Wirecard itself, had uncovered evidence of “serious offenses of forgery and/or of falsification of accounts” in the German company’s operations in the city-state, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, as well as in its home country.

Before today’s raid, however, a Wirecard spokesperson had referred Tech in Asia to the company’s February 4 investor conference call, in which CEO Markus Braun said that an internal probe carried out by the company’s compliance team prior to instructing Rajah & Tann didn’t turn up “any proof and any conclusive findings that any of these allegations were true.” He added that he “expect[s] this investigation to be finalized quite quickly.”

The allegations at the center of the investigation were made by a Singapore-based employee, accusing a colleague of “mature compliance breaches,” Braun explained.

Wirecard chief financial officer Alexander von Knoop, who oversaw the internal investigation, also spoke during the conference call earlier this week. He suggested that “personal animosities between employees involved” might account for the allegations instead of “an accounting compliance” issue.

“Where there are human beings, there are sometimes emotions […] I would really say this whole case has more to do with the relationship between people and not so much processes,” he added.

In response to an investor question asking whether Wirecard had been contacted by the Singapore police or other authorities, Braun said during the call that “we haven’t been contacted by any regulator, but we contacted the regulator here […] We do not expect any, let’s say, investigations starting there. This is also true for the Singaporean regulator.”

Wirecard – which trades on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange – offers a range of electronic payments processing and digital banking services. It counts Alipay, American Express, Apple Pay, UnionPay, and WeChat Pay among its partners, and issues Visa debit cards to customers of Singaporean cryptocurrency startup TenX.