SINGAPORE - The Singapore police and the central bank are investigating several local companies in relation to the Wirecard scandal.
Citadelle Corporate Services and Senjo Group and its subsidiaries are under suspicion of falsifying accounts and carrying on a trust business without a licence, said the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Friday (July 3).
This comes after a June 29 announcement that the MAS and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority are working with the CAD to scrutinise recent developments relating to Wirecard, which has filed for insolvency in Germany amid a growing accounting scandal.
"The review surfaced reasons to suspect that offences may have been committed," said the authorities.
"CAD and MAS have obtained documents and records from Citadelle and Senjo, and have interviewed persons involved in the companies."
CAD, which deals with white-collar crime, began investigations into Wirecard's Singapore operations in February 2019. It also raided Wirecard's local offices at Mapletree Business City after fraud allegations.
Wirecard went bankrupt last month after disclosing that US$2.1 billion (S$2.97 billion) of cash supposed to be in bank accounts in the Philippines probably didn't exist.
Citadelle was drawn into the spotlight after a Filipino lawyer said he opened six euro bank accounts in the name of his law firm, MKT Law, on behalf of Citadelle Corporate. The accounts were supposedly for Wirecard.
Company records show that Citadelle Corporate is a business administration company based in Singapore.
Providing trust services as a business in Singapore is regulated by the MAS.
"Citadelle is not licensed to provide trust business services in Singapore, and is not supervised by MAS," said the CAD and MAS.
The MAS has also listed Citadelle on the investor alert list on its website.
Senjo Group's website states that it is a global payments operator and fintech investor headquartered in Singapore with a portfolio of 20 companies.
