Singapore Court Jails Pair Over Wirecard Falsified Accounts
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A district court in Singapore recently sentenced two individuals, Singaporean R. Shanmugaratnam and Briton James Henry O’Sullivan, to jail over offences linked to Wirecard, according to local reports.
A report published yesterday, January 6, noted that Shanmugaratnam was earlier convicted of 13 counts of falsification of accounts linked to nearly €1.1 billion purportedly held in escrow for the collapsed German payments firm, Wirecard, as well as its related companies. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail on January 6.
As for O’Sullivan, he had abetted Shanmugaratnam and was sentenced to six and a half years behind bars after being convicted of five counts of falsification of accounts.
Both were found guilty of their charges in September 2025. Prior to this, during the proceedings, the court heard that Shanmugaratnam issued 13 balance confirmation letters between 2016 and 2018 while acting as a director of Citadelle Corporate Services.
The documents falsely confirmed to Wirecard AG and its related firms, WCUKI and Cardsystems, as well as their auditors, that Citadelle held nearly 1.1 billion EUR in escrow for the Wirecard entities across three financial years.
Details of The Crimes
The pair’s cases are also believed to be linked to an Austrian fugitive, Jan Marsalek, a former businessman who is now suspected to be a spy operative for Russia. Marsalek acted as the COO of Wirecard AG from 2010 to 2020, and currently has an Interpol Red Notice issued against him.
Beyond that, another named individual mentioned in the court documents is Oliver Bellenhaus, a German who used to act as a managing director of Cardsystems Middle East FZ, Wirecard’s subsidiary headquartered in Dubai.
According to reports from Singapore, deputy public prosecutors Gordon Oh, Louis Ngia, and Alexandria Shamini Joseph said in the court documents that O’Sullivan got to know Shanmugaratnam after the Briton engaged Citadelle’s services to set up companies in Singapore.
Citadelle then offered corporate secretarial services to 30 O’Sullivan’s companies, including Senjo Group, Senjo Payment, and Brightyear. Shanmugaratnam communicated with O’Sullivan directly via several email accounts and platforms, as well as the messaging app Telegram.
The prosecutors said that O’Sullivan and Marsalek were long-time business partners, and O’Sullivan eventually introduced Marsalek to Shanmugaratnam prior to July 2015. Then, in March 2016, he received a document from Marsalek that contained draft wording to be put into balance confirmation letters.
Soon after that, Shanmugaratnam prepared three letters on Citadelle’s letterhead using the provided wording, and has sent them to EY via email on March 29, 2016. Later that same day, EY Germany confirmed that it had received the email.
“The letters had mentioned three escrow accounts, and each of them purportedly had a balance of between €30 million and more than €66 million. Court documents stated that, in fact, Citadelle was not holding these sums of money for Wirecard and/or its subsidiaries as of Dec 31, 2015,” local reports in Singapore said.
