BSV Backer Calvin Ayre Tied Up In Wirecard Scandal

In 2019, Wirecard began making headlines in the Financial Times as what would turn out to be one of the largest financial scandals in the world and the biggest financial scandal in postwar Germany.

The payment processor and financial services company, once praised as representing "the best interests of the German economy as a whole" by then German chancellor Angela Merkel, turned out to be a massive fraud. Over 1.9 Billion Euros of Wirecard funds never actually existed and over 20 Billion in investor funds were lost in a crime story nothing short of a true crime thriller, implicating intelligence agencies, high ranking politicians, and a network of shell companies spanning the globe. Wirecard's founder Markus Braun has since been standing trial in a German court, while his co-conspirator, Jan Marsalek, presumably disappeared to Russia with the help of the FSB, never to be seen again.

Then there's Calvin Ayre: The online gambling kingpin known as the most prominent backer of Craig Wright's BSV both in spirit and in finance, who is now alleged to have been the "single customer" behind Wirecard's fabricated third-party business network.

Ayre as Wirecard's "Single Customer"

The first presumed to be missing 1.9 Billion Euros in Wirecard funds were alleged to have flowed through third-party Wirecard business partners located in Asia. Court proceedings now made clear, that money never existed. But the complex business network behind Wirecard still processed payments – which allegedly belonged to Ayre.

In a letter by former Wirecard CEO Marsalek addressed to German courts, the fugitive stated that a "'de facto a single customer' had stood behind the alleged third-party partner business, and he – Marsalek – had 'restructured a Canadian customer's corporate legal structures'" according to the German public broadcaster Tagesschau.

In a broad investigation, the German newsoutlet Bayrischer Rundfunk (BR) traced hundreds of millions of Euros through Wirecard's business network tying the payments to Ayre, including payments made to Ayre himself as well as to businesses directly tied to Ayre's gambling empire.

This includes a Spanish company called RGT, as well as a Manila based company called Tyche Consulting, which temporarily employed BSV founder and faketoshi Craig Wright. According to BR, the business network had been used to conceal that much of Wirecard's business was completely fabricated.

"Calvin was known for having built one of the biggest gambling companies in history. And a lot of money flowed through this system. Those flows started running through Wirecard. He was the man behind Wirecard. He is the big fish,” former nChain CEO Christian Ager-Hanssen told BR.

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