The head of an ethical fintech backed by Standard Chartered and marketed as “people and planet first” previously sought to set up arms deals with Jan Marsalek, the Wirecard executive who fled to Russia following the German company’s collapse.
Algbra founder Zeiad Idris was in regular contact with Marsalek before he was exposed in 2020 as a fraudster and Russian spy, according to WhatsApp messages seen by the FT.
As he was working to establish the London-based fintech, Idris in 2018 offered to assist Marsalek in raising a $2.75bn fund to acquire Russian military technology and sell it overseas, the correspondence shows.
In another exchange, Idris tells Marsalek an ex-colleague warned him to “stay away from Jan”, before adding: “I was never a good listener . . . Apparently you’re a bad boy.”
The pair’s relationship later took Idris to Marsalek’s Munich mansion and his private collection of military memorabilia, which included one artefact bearing an extraordinary claim: that it was a keepsake from the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
The proposed weapons fund was never launched. Idris says he has had no contact with Marsalek since the Austrian became a fugitive — before his work for Moscow was publicly known.
Algbra says it has had no relationship with Marsalek or Wirecard since it started trading.
An FT investigation has found that Marsalek participated in early-stage discussions about the creation of the business that became Algbra, however.
As Wirecard’s chief operating officer, Marsalek was the architect of the fraud that brought down the once-feted €24bn German payments company.
He also worked for years as a fixer for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, facilitating money laundering, blackmail and political interference as well as being involved in alleged kidnap and assassination plots.
To most who knew him at the time, however, he was simply one of Europe’s most successful businessmen: a gifted and impressive young entrepreneur who was helping revolutionise digital banking.
Wirecard in 2019 started paying New World Capital Advisors, a subsidiary of London-based New World Group, the first instalments of what would become a £490,000 retainer to develop a business plan for a “global Islamic digital bank”, according to contracts seen by the FT.
At NWCA, Idris took personal charge of the project and was the point person for contact with Marsalek.
Idris was also in contact with IMS Capital Partners, Marsalek’s self-described “family office” over a possible anchor investment in the project.
In March 2020, IMS began discussing how a large investment in Algbra could use a complicated offshore trust structure in order to “avoid burdensome KYC [know your customer] questions”.
A further push was made by Idris to get IMS to invest in early June 2020, just weeks before Wirecard collapsed and Marsalek fled.
IMS Capital collapsed after Wirecard’s demise and is now under investigation by German prosecutors over suspected money laundering.
Algbra, a Mastercard-issuing ethical online bank pitched at Muslims in the UK, the Middle East and Asia, is regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and counts former UK chancellor Philip Hammond among its advisers.
The company was first incorporated in May 2020 by Idris, company records show. It launched itself to consumers the following year. Idris became CEO in June 2021.
The start-up has become one of the success stories of the UK fintech sector, claiming to have processed more than £670mn of digital payments and boasting thousands of business and consumer clients.
As CEO, Idris has made ethics and integrity core to Algbra’s identity.
In the fintech’s 2024 annual report he wrote that its founding principles, which “sit at the intersection of ESG and Shariah compliance”, position it to serve customers “seeking ethical, future-proof financial solutions”.
An Algbra advertisement released last year, featuring a stand-off between two Wild West gunslingers who embrace rather than shoot, declares that the company believes arms are “for hugs”.
Idris has proved a consummate networker. Photographs show him in Silicon Valley lobbying for London with mayor Sadiq Khan and at the Chelsea Flower Show alongside Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters.
He told the FT he knew Marsalek from his time working at The Capital Partnership, a London-based investment firm founded by Ahmed Ben Halim, and at Libya Holdings Group, Ben Halim’s Libya-focused investment platform.
Idris met Marsalek while helping raise funds for LHG investments. During the course of that relationship he also came to understand that Marsalek had deep connections to Russia and was involved with the Wagner mercenary group.
In a lengthy personal testimonial written in 2017 while trying to raise money after leaving LHG, Idris highlighted his relationship with the Austrian.
“I know Jan Marsalek personally invested €10mn recently into a deal with Libya Holdings to acquire four oil rigs,” he wrote. Marsalek was also interested in acquiring a stake in LHG itself, he added, and had deep pockets.
LHG and Ben Halim say they did not learn until 2022 that Marsalek had invested in their business.
As was common in the thousands of messages involving Marsalek that the FT has reviewed over the years, the line between jest and seriousness was often hard to read. Exchanges with Idris about arms sales were peppered with personalised emojis and jocular language.
In October 2018, eager to court Marsalek as an investor for new business ideas he was exploring, Idris travelled to Munich, where Marsalek hosted him at his palatial villa.
There the then Wirecard executive showed Idris a private collection of war trophies and military memorabilia, including an item he presented as one of his most cherished relics: a transparent biological evidence bag, of US military origin, containing Muslim prayer beads and a piece of material.
The beads, Marsalek claimed, were held by bin Laden before his assassination by US Navy Seals, and the cloth was later used to wipe the al-Qaeda founder’s face.
Idris later recounted the encounter to friends, along with pictures of the purported evidence bag.
The evening continued with Marsalek buying luxury Bavarian Lederhosen for Idris so he would fit in at Oktoberfest, where Marsalek was a regular high-spending corporate host, according to the messages.
On another occasion Marsalek sent Idris a presentation for the $2.75bn fund he was seeking to raise to purchase intellectual property relating to Russian military technology and bring it to market.
Although the tone of their correspondence was light-hearted, the presentation was dozens of pages long and contained close technical detail on weapons systems and their battlefield performance.
The apparent goal was to sell Russian military hardware to Qatar to help it achieve military parity with Saudi Arabia. Marsalek told Idris there would be no problems from Russian authorities.
A diagram with a pile of bullets at its centre said the fund, if established, would be a leading force in exports of advanced Russian weaponry.
Idris told Marsalek he could market the fund using his London-based business and raise money for it through his own network of investors.
He prepared his own presentation for what he called the “Global Strategic Technology Fund”, which made no direct reference to weapons. It said a “Munich-based team” had “access to key people in Eurasia” and could guarantee access to “technology opportunities”.
The proposal went nowhere, not least because Idris’s business associates at NWCA and NWG were uneasy about Marsalek and wanted nothing to do with him, according to the WhatsApp messages.
NWG, which removed Idris as a director in January this year but where he remains a major shareholder, declined to comment.
Idris is currently locked in a legal dispute with NWG.
StanChart, which via its investment arm SC Ventures is Algbra’s largest creditor, declined to comment.
Idris told the FT he had had “zero” contact with Marsalek since the Austrian’s disappearance. He added that Algbra had no ongoing link to Marsalek, and that it only began operations after Marsalek’s fall from grace.
Idris also said he was a younger man when he first met Marsalek and had since changed.
Idris appears to be among the last people in Europe contacted by Marsalek before his work for Russia became public.
“Please make Algbra a truly great company in my absence,” Marsalek told Idris in a message on June 22 2020 — by which time he was already in Minsk and on his way to his exile in Moscow.
