BERLIN—German investigators are asking the public to help them find Jan Marsalek, the elusive former Wirecard AG executive who prosecutors suspect played a central role in inflating the fintech company’s results by booking fake income for years. The German payments group, which was briefly worth more than the country’s largest bank, filed for insolvency in late June after disclosing that more than $2 billion of its cash supposedly held in trustee-managed bank accounts was probably fake. German prosecutors suspect Mr. Marsalek, longtime Chief Executive Markus Braun and others colluded to inflate the company’s results by booking fake income since at least 2015, which allowed Wirecard to raise €3.2 billion ($3.8 billion) in loans prosecutors believe are now likely lost. But while Mr. Braun and three others have been arrested since, Mr. Marsalek has eluded authorities since the company’s collapse in June. Earlier hints about the former executive’s whereabouts pointed to the Philippines and then Russia, but investigators said Wednesday that an international search for him had failed so far.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 13, 2020 10:40 UTC