German online payments firm Wirecard AG has seen its stock plunge by more than one-third over the past few days on reports of accounting misdeeds at its Singapore unit.
The company is fighting back by questioning the foundations of the allegations.
A preliminary review in May last year by a respected Singapore law firm listed allegations of potential financial irregularities, money laundering and forgery at Wirecard’s Asian unit.
However, the German company said that the report is based on evidence that is either faulty or forged.
A deeper investigation by the law firm so far has not “found any evidence of criminal misconduct,” Wirecard chief executive Markus Braun said by telephone on Friday from the company’s headquarters near Munich, Germany.
“This whole issue will be resolved quickly,” he said.
Yet investors got another red flag on Friday when Singapore police raided Wirecard’s offices there, ratcheting up concerns over its accounting practices.
A spokeswoman said that the company had “provided the police with comprehensive supporting material in regards to their inquiry.”
The 31-page initial investigation that Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP completed last year is largely based on the accounts of a person the lawyers call “Bobby.”
The document describes allegations of criminal activity ranging from backdating agreements to forged invoices.
Wirecard has said that the report is authentic, but that the findings relied on documents of suspicious provenance, possibly intended to damage Wirecard or profit from short-selling, as its stock has lost about 9 billion euros (US$10.2 billion) in value since the Financial Times first published the allegations on Wednesday last week.
German prosecutors said that they have launched a market manipulation probe in response to a criminal complaint Wirecard filed in the wake of the share drop.
Officials have not named any suspects and said that they have not found any reason to investigate Wirecard employees over accounting fraud allegations.
Wirecard said that after Rajah & Tann wrapped up the report, it hired the firm to do a fuller investigation.
Braun last week saw the original report for the first time, he said, adding that until then, the entire affair had been handled by the company’s internal compliance team, which by design does not include the chief executive officer to avoid pressure from top management.
Braun said that a final report would be available in “a matter of weeks” and that he is confident that it would clear the company and its employees of wrongdoing.
Rajah & Tann’s preliminary investigation focused on three Wirecard employees in Singapore.
There is evidence to suggest that they “knowingly worked together to create and backdate agreements billed by Wirecard Singapore up to three years prior,” the report said.
The documents cite actual companies, but the lawyers said that they did not include correspondence to back up a real commercial relationship.
“To date, we have not seen a single e-mail from any of the counterparties, which, given the nature and size of the deals, raises doubt as to the authenticity of the same,” the lawyers wrote. “There are strong reasons to believe that both the agreements and invoices may be fictitious.”
The company said that the preliminary report is based on evidence provided by the person identified as “Bobby,” including the e-mails it cites.
The investigators preparing the report did not have access to the company’s servers to judge the authenticity of those e-mails, Braun said.
He pointed to a statement this week by Rajah & Tann, which said that in preparing its new report, the lawyers had “made no conclusive findings of criminal misconduct on the part of any officer or employee of the company.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last