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A business partner and close confidant of Jan Marsalek has spoken publicly for the first time about his relationship with the fugitive former Wirecard executive during a trial in Singapore over his role in the German payments company’s collapse.
James Henry O’Sullivan, a 50-year-old British national who ran several businesses in Asia with close ties to Wirecard, is on trial on charges of abetting his Singaporean co-defendant to commit fraud by falsifying documents.
The Singapore case involves a series of escrow accounts that Wirecard’s auditors were told contained hundreds of millions of euros of cash reserves built up by the company’s outsourced operations in Asia.
In June 2020, Wirecard disclosed that €1.9bn said to be in the accounts did not exist. The business subsequently collapsed, in one of Europe’s largest accounting scandals.
Giving evidence on Monday, O’Sullivan said he had first met Marsalek in late 2009 or early 2010 in Vienna, where they had discussed a legal dispute between Wirecard and businesses connected to O’Sullivan.
Over the years, the pair regularly saw each other to discuss business and socialise, often in Monaco, Munich or Singapore. On one occasion, Marsalek joined O’Sullivan on a New Year skiing trip in Italy to discuss an investment in India.
When asked whether work meetings would always end up with socialising, O’Sullivan replied: “Very much so”.
O’Sullivan described Marsalek as “a very serious intelligent businessman” and “slightly socially awkward”.
“His almost dysfunctional awkwardness added to the mystique of the personality and I think he played on that as well,” O’Sullivan said. “He became a friend to me as much as he could become a friend.”
O’Sullivan added that, soon after they met, Marsalek encouraged him to conduct all their communication through Telegram, the highly secretive messaging app. He said that when Marsalek disappeared once the Wirecard fraud was exposed in 2020, all their Telegram messages disappeared.
O’Sullivan told the court on Monday that on one occasion Marsalek appeared to show that he had remote access to a journalist’s phone, including their messages, contacts and photos.
On another occasion, O’Sullivan said Marsalek presented him with a 12cm stack of printed WhatsApp chat messages. He claimed they were a short seller’s communications with other investors and journalists that his team of investigators had acquired.
Marsalek has since been exposed as the ringmaster for a team of Russian spies operating across Europe. O’Sullivan said the executive had run multiple investigations into short sellers, investors and journalists that he deemed to be enemies of Wirecard.
He added that Marsalek once gave him a pair of mobile phones for his own use that he claimed were developed by Israeli spy agency Mossad and he described as “the most secure 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 become “the Nick Leeson of his generation”, in reference to the British financier who brought down Barings Bank in Singapore 30 years ago this month.
He added that she also likened him to Jimmy Savile, the British celebrity who was exposed as a prolific paedophile after his death.
Tito Isaac, defending O’Sullivan, said the investigation was “pre-determined and misguided” and that his client denied abetting his co-defendant’s falsification of documents.
“The nature of Mr O’Sullivan’s dealings with the Wirecard Group has been misunderstood and mischaracterised, and the evidence presented to the court remains incomplete to date,” Isaac said.
O’Sullivan’s co-defendant, Shan Rajaratnam, was a director of secretarial firm Citadelle Corporate Services. The 61-year-old Singaporean testified in an earlier period of the trial.
O’Sullivan is facing five charges and Rajaratnam 13, each relating to specific fraudulent transactions and carrying up to 10 years in prison as well as fines.
Prosecutors allege that O’Sullivan instructed Rajaratnam to falsify documents, sending letters that gave the impression that his company, Citadelle, held hundreds of millions of euros on behalf of Wirecard in escrow accounts when no funds existed. In some instances, the bank accounts themselves were fake.
The charges relate to paperwork sent by Rajaratnam between March 2016 and March 2018 that purported to show hundreds of millions of euros overseen by Citadelle on behalf of Wirecard in Singaporean bank accounts.
Prosecutors allege that Rajaratnam sent the first fake letters in 2016 under the instruction of Marsalek to deceive Wirecard’s auditors at EY. Rajaratnam’s lawyer, Megan Chia of Tan Rajah & Cheah, has denied he had any intention to defraud.
The prosecutors’ case includes 53 documents retrieved from Rajaratnam’s laptop and phone, including letters, emails and Telegram messages.
The trial is due to continue over the coming weeks into March.