As of: January 24, 2024, 4:32 p.m
Comments
Press
Split
The Wirecard logo: More people from Southeast Asia are being questioned in the court case in Munich.
© Peter Kneffel / dpa
Witnesses from Southeast Asia are increasingly being questioned in the Munich Wirecard trial.
On Wednesday, an ex-partner boss who came especially from Malaysia shifted all the blame away from himself - and onto an old acquaintance.
Munich - The head of one of the most important partner companies of the former payment service provider Wirecard said he was only partially informed about what was happening in his company.
According to his impression, the then Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek had a leading role, said witness Yoshio Tomiie, who traveled from Malaysia, on Wednesday in the criminal trial surrounding the billion-dollar Wirecard bankruptcy before the Munich regional court.
According to his interpreter, the Japanese was “nominee director”, i.e. pro forma boss, of the Senjo Group based in Asia.
“People have said I’ve been pretty stupid,” he admitted.
“But a director is a director.
That's also the reason why I came here." A company in the Senjo company network is said to have contributed a large part of the Wirecard Group's sales as a so-called third party partner (TPA).
However, the Munich public prosecutor's office is convinced that Wirecard's board members invented these transactions in order to whitewash the actually loss-making company.
Witness: “I trusted Jan Marsalek”
“I trusted Jan Marsalek,” said the witness.
The division of tasks for the planned expansion into Myanmar consisted of Marsalek delivering the drafts of a presentation and he, Tomiie, talking to the central bank director there.
There were no specific working hours associated with his monthly salary at the time of 15,000 Singapore dollars (a good 10,000 euros at today's exchange rate).
When asked by judge Markus Födisch about other business transactions, he replied: “I had nothing to do with it.
It must have been Jan who set this up.”
The DAX group Wirecard collapsed in June 2020 when it was discovered that 1.9 billion euros were missing from escrow accounts in Asia.
Former boss Markus Braun and two other ex-managers are in the dock for falsifying accounts and gang fraud.
Braun has contradicted the charges and said the money existed and was taken behind his back.
Marsalek, who was responsible for the Asian business at the time, has gone into hiding.
There is an international search for him.
(Reuters, lf)