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Azura resort on Benguerra Island
Photo: Tom Richardson / Alamy / mauritius images
SPIEGEL has received an explosive invitation to a multi-day birthday party in the Azura Benguerra Island resort in Mozambique, Africa, related to the Wirecard affair.
The paper dates from 2014. In addition to the Austrian real estate entrepreneur Cevdet Caner and his wife Gerda, the almost 30 guests who were written to included Jan Marsalek, the alleged main perpetrator in the Wirecard scandal, and Brigitte Häuser-Axtner and Carlos Häuser, who were also accused.
They wanted to be brought to the island by helicopter.
Co-host was Marsalek confidante Henry O'Sullivan, who celebrated his 40th birthday with the illustrious company on Benguerra Island.
Those invited who are able to do so are asked to "bring champagne or spirits with them from a duty-free shop upon arrival," O'Sullivan told his company in advance.
On the day after the party, people come together for an »after-party picnic«.
Hauser and Hauser-Axtner deny having been "close confidants" of Marsalek and see "still no evidence of criminal conduct" in the Wirecard case.
Caner also denies close ties to Marsalek (Read a background story on Caner's activities and his connection to the troubled German housing group Adler here.).
He met the Wirecard manager through O'Sullivan in 2014, but never met him alone and had no business relationship with him.
Caner admits that he was invited to the celebration in Mozambique.
But he canceled.
In the years that followed there was only "loose contact," but the meetings "always took place in connection with O'Sullivan."
The last encounter with Marsalek was also some time ago: in 2016 or 2017 they met at a celebration of the O'Sullivan in southern France.
The Adler Group, one of the largest landlords in Germany, has been defending itself against allegations of fraud for months.
Investor Fraser Perring accuses Adler of whitewashing financial metrics.
The speculator had already warned of fraud at Wirecard in 2016.
O'Sullivan, Hauser and Hauser-Axtner live in Singapore and are currently not allowed to leave the country due to ongoing investigations into Wirecard.
The Brit O'Sullivan is considered the most important figure in the Wirecard scandal outside the company itself. Together with Marsalek, he is said to have built the illusion of a billion-dollar corporation with the help of alleged partner companies in Asia and embezzled hundreds of millions.
315 million euros in Mauritius
O'Sullivan was apparently also behind one of the most dubious deals in the Wirecard scandal.
On October 27, 2015, a Mauritius-based fund called EMIF1A sold the Indian company Hermes to Wirecard for 315 million euros.
Hermes itself only acquired EMIF1A in September for 35 million euros.
It has been suspected for years that Marsalek and O'Sullivan have enriched themselves from the business, but neither in civil lawsuits in London and India nor in the course of the public prosecutor's investigations in Munich has it been possible to determine who was ultimately behind the fund.
According to a recent report in the »Handelsblatt«, it was apparently O'Sullivan who set up the EMIF1A fund.
The Indian financial services provider IIFL confirmed to the newspaper that O'Sullivan commissioned IIFL in early 2015 to set up a "fund structure in Mauritius" "to acquire assets in India".
Wirecard's insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé today describes Hermes as largely worthless and unsaleable.
Chats from the messenger service Fleet also show how O'Sullivan, Marsalek and others then exchanged views on the use of the fund's assets.
Among other things, they used the money to set up the travel agency Goomo, which then received a loan from the Wirecard Bank but never repaid it.
