A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office said they face charges of organized fraud and market manipulation.

The charges are based on testimony from a state witness and the assessment of documents which allegedly show that the individuals concerned decided to “inflate” Wirecard’s balance sheet as early as 2015.

Wirecard, a DAX-listed payment services firm based on the outskirts of the southern German city, went bankrupt after a 1.9-billion-euro (2.2-billion-dollar) hole in its accounts was revealed last month.

One of the three arrest warrants was issued against a former chief financial officer.

Braun was re-arrested, after having been already released on bail set at 5 million euros (5.8 million dollars) last month.

The former head of Wirecard’s Dubai-based Cardsystems Middle East subsidiary is also in custody.

The missing 1.9 billion euros were said to have been held in trustee accounts in the Philippines that appear to have been non-existent.

Those funds were said to have been income generated from transactions with subcontractors who processed credit card payments for Wirecard in South-east Asia and the Middle East.

Investigators now believe that this third-party venture was either entirely or in-part made-up.

Of the 45 subsidiaries belonging to the Wirecard parent company, only three turned a sizeable profit.

The allegedly bogus transactions were conducted via Middle East, which contributed significantly to Wirecard’s profit in 2018 with earnings of 237 million euros.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure to explain her relationship to Wirecard, which was long dogged by rumours of financial misconduct, despite once being lauded as a global competitor for Germany in the tech industry.

The Bundestag parliament’s finance committee is to hold a special hearing on the Wirecard scandal on July 29, during which Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Economy Minister Peter Altmaier are to face questioning behind closed doors.

During a trip to China to promote German business interests back in September 2019, Merkel brought up the payment service provider’s planned takeover of Chinese company AllScore Financial.

“At the time of the trip, she had no knowledge of possible serious irregularities at Wirecard,” a government spokesman said, adding that the government regularly promotes the economic interests of German companies during its bilateral meetings with other countries.

It emerged on Wednesday that Merkel’s chancellery had had repeated dealings with Wirecard and its advisors from late 2018 onwards.

Merkel spoke with Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a former defence minister turned Wirecard advisor, ahead of her China visit, according to information provided by the government.

And on August 13, 2019, the government’s former intelligence service commissioner, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, is said to have contacted the chancellery to ask for a meeting between Wirecard AG and Merkel’s business adviser, Lars-Hendrik Roeller.

Ahead of this appointment, which took place on September 11, 2019, staffers in the chancellery had called the Finance Ministry in order to gather information on the company.

Scholz was made aware on February 19, 2019, that Germany’s Bafin financial regulator was investigating Wirecard for suspected market manipulation, his ministry has said.

Fritsche told the Spiegel news magazine that he had been asked by a friend to put Wirecard in touch with Merkel’s office and was paid by the company as an external consultant.

“We talked quite civilly. No aid was demanded of the chancellery or of the chancellor herself,” he was quoted as saying with regards to the September 2019 meeting.