The scandalous Wirecard group was brought down by the research of a persistent British reporter. Now Dan McCrum is publishing his book about the alleged billion-dollar fraud.

Almost two years after Wirecard’s insolvency, an authoritative book on the scandal will be published on Friday: British reporter Dan McCrum has published the German version of his story about the alleged billion-dollar fraud at the former Dax group and payment service provider under the title “House of Wirecard”.

The journalist who works for the London “Financial Times” uncovered the case with the help of whistleblowers and colleagues in five years of research – and feared losing his job and livelihood himself. “More than once I thought my career was over,” writes McCrum in his foreword to the German edition, which is published by Econ-Verlag.

His articles put the Wirecard board under pressure

Because the reporter himself became the target of investigations by the German authorities in the course of his research. “A little-known reporter over in London had hijacked the pages of the FT in a vendetta against one of Europe’s most successful tech companies.” This is how McCrum felt the mood in Germany was against him.

His research started with abnormalities in Wirecard’s balance sheets. For years, however, he had no evidence until a Wirecard employee in Singapore passed internal receipts and documents to the “Financial Times”.

In 2019, McCrum’s article finally led to the Wirecard board of directors finding it difficult to explain and agreeing to a special audit of the business figures by the auditing company KPMG. In their report, for the first time, there was official talk of missing evidence worth billions. The bankruptcy application followed at the end of June 2020 after Wirecard had to admit that 1.9 billion euros booked in trust accounts could not be found.

However, the book is not a settlement with the German authorities: McCrum, who has meanwhile come under suspicion himself, states: “The long, thorough and exhaustive public investigation indicates a willingness to learn lessons from the Wirecard case.”