A Singapore court has sentenced two businessmen to lengthy prison terms for falsifying financial documents that helped conceal one of Europe’s largest corporate frauds, the collapse of German payments company Wirecard. The ruling marks a rare and significant criminal outcome linked to the global scandal that shook regulators, auditors, and investors.
According to local media reports cited by Reuters, the court found that the defendants deliberately created false records to mislead auditors into believing Wirecard held hundreds of millions of euros in bank accounts that never existed. The case centers on fabricated confirmation letters that were used to support Wirecard’s financial statements in the years leading up to its dramatic downfall in 2020.
Singaporean accountant R. Shanmugaratnam, 59, received a 10-year prison sentence. British national James Henry O’Sullivan, 51, was sentenced to six and a half years. The court concluded that both men acted on instructions from senior Wirecard executives and knowingly misrepresented the existence of large escrow balances linked to Wirecard’s Asia operations.
Wirecard collapsed in June 2020 after admitting that €1.9 billion it had recorded as cash on its balance sheet simply did not exist. The revelation triggered insolvency proceedings in Germany and exposed sweeping failures in corporate governance, auditing, and regulatory oversight. The scandal remains one of the most notorious examples of accounting fraud in modern European history.
False confirmations that misled auditors
Court findings showed that Shanmugaratnam, a director at Singapore-based accounting firm Citadelle, issued multiple false balance confirmation letters between 2016 and 2018. These documents falsely assured auditors that Wirecard funds sat safely in escrow accounts. In reality, no such funds were held.
O’Sullivan, who used Citadelle’s services to set up companies in Singapore, played a supporting role. Prosecutors said he helped facilitate the scheme by abetting the creation and use of the falsified documents. Together, the false confirmations formed a critical part of the deception that allowed Wirecard to continue reporting strong financial health.
The Singapore convictions add another layer to the international legal fallout from the Wirecard case. While several former executives face charges in Germany, enforcement actions elsewhere have progressed unevenly. Singapore’s ruling stands out as one of the clearest instances where individuals outside Europe have faced substantial prison sentences for their role in enabling the fraud.
Importantly, the case underscores how complex financial crimes often rely on seemingly routine paperwork. False confirmations, when accepted at face value, can undermine audit safeguards and allow fabricated assets to pass through multiple layers of review. Regulators and investigators have since pointed to Wirecard as a cautionary tale about overreliance on third-party assurances.
For whistleblowers and compliance professionals, the Singapore verdict reinforces a central lesson of the Wirecard scandal. Corporate fraud rarely hinges on a single false entry. Instead, it survives through networks of enablers, forged documents, and weak controls that span borders. Even years after Wirecard’s collapse, courts continue to unravel how the deception worked — and who helped keep it alive.