Over the past year I have seen a few headlines on the Wirecard scandal in Germany and took a closer look. That closer look took me through a series of events beginning in 2002 through Wirecard’s downfall in 2020, which read more like a movie or a novel than real life. Dan McCrum, a writer for the Financial Times in London, wrote a series of articles on Wirecard that questioned its accounting. The story has so many players, events, and twists and turns that I can only highlight a few of them here.

What Is Wirecard?

Wirecard AG was a payment processor and financial services provider in Germany. Established in 1999, Wirecard was on the verge of closure until Markus Braun, a former consultant with KPMG, joined the company as CEO in 2002 and merged it with rival Electronic Business Systems. Braun built Wirecard by processing payments for pornography and gambling websites.