Wirecard: Germany's Biggest Corporate Fraud

Wirecard was Germany's fintech miracle — a €24 billion DAX giant worth more than Deutsche Bank, backed by SoftBank, and praised by Angela Merkel as a national champion. Then auditors asked a simple question: where is the €1.9 billion? The money — a quarter of the entire balance sheet — was probably never there at all. In four days the CEO was arrested, the company went bankrupt, and his number two vanished on a private jet. Investigators would later expose him as a Russian GRU asset. This is the full story of the biggest corporate fraud in German history — the fake empire, the journalists who were investigated for being right, and the spy who disappeared with its secrets. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 The €1.9 billion lie 0:35 Germany's PayPal 2:27 The machine nobody could see 4:05 Shoot the messenger 6:13 The audit that found nothing 7:03 Four days in June 8:29 The vanishing 10:46 The reckoning 12:31 By the numbers 13:20 The lesson ⚠️ This documentary reports allegations from prosecutors (Munich public prosecutor's office), court filings, parliamentary inquiries and media investigations (Financial Times, Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, The Insider). Markus Braun and related parties are presumed innocent until proven guilty; fraud and breach-of-trust charges are allegations under active prosecution in Munich. Claims about Jan Marsalek's intelligence connections are based on investigative reporting and are unproven in court. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to The Collapse Tapes for a new corporate-collapse documentary every week. Empires fall. We show you how. #Wirecard #Documentary 🎵 Original music