Key witness puts a heavy burden on ex-CEO Braun – lawyer wants Wirecard process to be stopped

Created: 12/19/2022, 5:42 p.m

Wirecard - one of the biggest financial scandals in the Federal Republic is currently being examined in court.

Now ex-CEO Braun is charged by a key witness.

© Peter Kneffel / dpa

In the Wirecard process, a key witness heavily burdened the former CEO Markus Braun.

However, the accused apparently sees himself more as a victim.

Munich (dpa) - In the Wirecard trial, the key witness for the public prosecutor's office accused the former CEO Markus Braun as a key figure in the billions of years of fraud.

"Wirecard was a cancerous growth," said co-defendant manager Oliver Bellenhaus on Monday before the Munich Regional Court.

"There was a system of organized fraud." Braun was an "absolute CEO" (Chief Executive Officer).

"If he said something, that's how it was done." Braun and Bellenhaus have been in custody for two and a half years, the third accused is the former Wirecard chief accountant.

The public prosecutor accuses the three defendants and other suspects of forming a criminal gang of fraudsters and cheating the lenders of the Dax group, which collapsed in 2020, out of 3.1 billion euros with invented profits.

Brown denies the allegations.

"Frightened by his own life" - the accused admits allegations

"He sees himself as a victim, and that's a well-known pattern," Bellenhaus said of his former boss.

Until the collapse of the payment service provider in June 2020, Braun had always rejected years of doubt about the balance sheets in bulk.

"Blind loyalty" to Braun and the former sales director Jan Marsalek, who has been on the run for two and a half years, made him break the law and put him in prison, Bellenhaus said.

On the third day of the trial, the 49-year-old was the first of the three accused to testify;

he is also the only one to admit the allegations.

"I'm shocked about my own life," said the key witness - and emphasized how much he regretted the immense damage.

Key witness without precise information about the beginning of the crime

However, Bellenhaus' statement did not reveal when the fraud began and how the Wirecard gang is said to have formed.

Braun's defense accuses him of having set aside and embezzled millions of dollars in company funds.

Despite being a key witness, Bellenhaus has been in custody for two and a half years, like Braun.

"Big lies became big lies," Bellenhaus said about the beginnings of the criminal business.

However, he reported on several meetings in which Braun and other suspects are said to have taken part and discussed how the facade of the invented business could be preserved.

Wirecard process: Braun blames Bellenhaus

Wirecard was a payment service provider that mainly processed credit card payments in retail and on the Internet.

According to the indictment, Wirecard booked billions of dollars in invented “third-party partners” through the subsidiary Cardsystems Middle East in Dubai managed by Bellenhaus.

These third-party partners were companies that processed payments on behalf of Wirecard.

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The Dax group collapsed in June 2020 after admitting that 1.9 billion third-party funds allegedly booked in Southeast Asian trust accounts could not be found.

The public prosecutor's office accuses the three defendants, Jan Marsalek, the sales director who went into hiding, and other suspects of forming a gang and cheating the group's lenders out of 3.1 billion euros.

Braun has explained through his defense attorneys that the missing billions actually existed, but that immense sums of money had been siphoned off by Bellenhaus and other scammers.

Braun defender wants the process stopped

For his part, Bellenhaus accused Braun of “misconceptions”.

If the third-party business had existed and been profitable, traces of it should have been found even after the Wirecard collapse.

"After June 18, 2020, all of this is said to have disappeared overnight without a trace," said Bellenhaus.

More than 1000 retailers would have had to look for a new partner for payment processing.

"Such a processing vacuum should have caused some unrest throughout the industry."

Braun's defense attorney Alfred Dierlamm wants the process to be stopped because of serious allegations against the public prosecutor's office.

Dierlamm accuses the investigators of having started investigating the actual payment flows much too late.

55,000 new pages of documents - lawyer criticizes the public prosecutor's office

Those involved in the proceedings would be flooded with new documents, said the lawyer - shortly before the start of the process 44,000 PDF pages, then another 11,000 pages.

"The investigations that the public prosecutor's office has missed in two years of proceedings and are now being carried out parallel to the ongoing main hearing are a bottomless pit," said the defense attorney.

Dierlamm's second, equally serious allegation is that the public prosecutor's office withheld essential documents from the defense.

The public prosecutor rejected the criticism.

"The files on this indictment are complete," said the investigating authority on request.

The billions cited by Braun and Dierlamm in the accounts of former Wirecard business partners relate to transactions that are not part of the indictment and are therefore irrelevant to the proceedings.

The Chamber has not yet decided on the suspension request.