ADVERTISEMENT

Wirecard Compliance Executive Is Said to Have Left the Company

Wirecard Compliance Executive Is Said to Have Left the Company

(Bloomberg) -- A senior Asian compliance executive at Wirecard AG has left the payments company, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Royston Ng, the Singapore-based head of regulatory compliance in Asia, departed Wirecard in recent days, said the people, who asked not to be identified speaking about personnel matters. A Wirecard spokeswoman said its policy is not to comment on staff-related matters. Efforts to reach Ng were not successful.

While the exact reasons for Ng’s departure aren’t clear, the timing comes just days after the company released a summary of an external report into fraud allegations, which found a series of irregularities and said some local employees in Singapore could be held criminally liable.

Wirecard has been buffeted by a series of reports in the Financial Times about alleged accounting wrongdoing at its Singapore operations. While the stock surged 26 percent on Tuesday after releasing the findings from law firm Rajah & Tann, the company has declined to release the full report.

Ng was also mentioned in an 31-page initial investigation that Rajah & Tann completed in May last year, largely based on the accounts of a person the lawyers call “Bobby.” The document said Ng was one of the executives approached by the whistleblower over the alleged irregularities. Ng wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing in the report.

A probe by Singapore authorities is ongoing, and Wirecard’s bid to limit the scope of the investigation was rejected by the country’s high court this month.

Ng joined Wirecard in 2017 after senior legal roles at PayPal Holdings Inc. and General Electric Co., according to his LinkedIn profile, where his title is listed as Head of Global Regulatory Compliance.

To contact the reporters on this story: Giles Turner in London at gturner35@bloomberg.net;Jan-Patrick Barnert in Frankfurt at jbarnert3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Anne Swardson

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.