The first witness in the committee of inquiry into the Wirecard scandal is a top-class figure.
What does ex-CEO Braun reveal?
A court forces him to appear in Berlin in person.
Update from November 19, 2:28 p.m.:
The former boss of the scandal company Wirecard,
Markus Braun
, does not see any unfair behavior by authorities and politics in connection with the
accounting scandal
.
He had "at no time made determinations or received indications that authorities, supervisory bodies or politicians had not behaved correctly, in breach of duty or in any form unfair," said Braun on Thursday in front of the
Bundestag investigative committee
.
This also applies to the supervisory board as a controlling body and to the auditors.
He will not say more in front of the committee, said Braun, who has been in
custody
since the summer
.
He first wanted to
speak
to the
public prosecutor
.
“In the end, independent judges will decide who bears legal responsibility for the collapse of the Wirecard AG company,” he said.
Braun then refused to testify to any questions from MPs.
Wirecard / Investigation Committee: Markus Braun has to testify before the Investigation Committee
First report from November 19, 10:56 a.m .:
Munich / Berlin - The former boss of the scandal company
Wirecard
is
to
testify
on Thursday in the
investigation committee of
the Bundestag about the
balance sheet fraud
.
The MPs want to ask the ex-manager about his contacts to politics and authorities.
That he will comment on possible criminal activities and the specific
allegations of fraud by
the public prosecutor's office is assessed as rather unlikely.
Witnesses don't have to incriminate themselves.
Markus Braun
is one of the main people responsible for the fraud scandal in which Wirecard is said to have booked billions in bogus transactions for years.
The committee wants to discover whether the German
fintech company,
as an up-and-coming star on the stock exchange, was
handled with kid gloves
by the
supervisory authorities
despite indications of irregularities.
It is also about failures of the politicians, which is why Braun's contacts could be relevant.
Wirecard / Investigation Committee: Markus Braun is in custody
The ex-manager sitting since the summer in Bavaria in
custody
.
Originally he did not want to appear in person before the committee in Berlin, but instead wanted to testify via video.
However, the Federal Court of Justice did not allow these applications, so Markus Braun * was brought to Berlin on Wednesday.
He stays in a
prison
.
Incidentally, Mr. Braun's lawyers are said to have stated in his defense that I would like to have him shown in pijama if necessary!
Do not worry.
He can also appear in a turtleneck!
I am generous there.
- Fabio De Masi (Member of the Bundestag) (@FabioDeMasi) November 17, 2020
Braun is not the only witness who
is supposed to testify in front of the committee
on
Thursday
: A member of the
Wirecard supervisory board
, the former head of accounting and a manager responsible for the Wirecard subsidiary in Dubai are also questioned.
The two managers should be connected via video - probably also so that they do not meet Braun.
Wirecard / Investigation Committee: Years of losses in the insolvent Dax group
The now
insolvent Dax * group
had
granted
air bookings
of 1.9 billion euros
in the summer
.
The company, once traded as the German hope for technology, sat as a service provider for cashless payments at shop tills and on the Internet at the interface between
merchants
and
credit card companies *
- in a highly competitive market.
According to the current status of the investigation, Wirecard * made
losses
for years
.
The
Munich prosecutor
assumes that since 2015
fictitious profits
were auswiesen.
According to their calculations, banks and investors alone lost more than three billion euros.
But they are not the only victims; many
shareholders also
lost money because the Wirecard share * crashed rapidly after the scandal became known.
On Wednesday it became known that after the bankruptcy, a good 11,500 creditors filed claims totaling 12.4 billion euros.
This sum exceeds the proceeds achieved so far in winding up the group many times over.
It is ruled out that the insolvency administrator will
completely get back the
billions lost
.
Wirecard / Committee of Inquiry: Merkel and Scholz should also be questioned as witnesses
In addition to Wirecard itself, the
financial supervisory authority Bafin
and an auditing company are criticized
in the case
.
Central questions in the political reappraisal should be when the federal government knew about the irregularities and whether it did too little about it.
Chancellor
Angela Merkel
*
(CDU *), who campaigned for Wirecard on a trip to China last year, and Finance Minister
Olaf Scholz
(SPD *) are also to be questioned as witnesses in the investigative committee.
In response to the scandal, Scholz presented an action plan for reforming financial supervision.
The opposition accuses him, however, of trying to divert attention from his own failure as the top head of financial supervision.
A
committee of inquiry
has more rights than ordinary Bundestag committees.
He can
question witnesses
and
experts
and demand inspection of the files.
(dpa) * Merkur.de is part of the Ippen digital network.