100 days of negotiations – first day in the trial against ex-Wirecard boss Braun

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It is the largest fraud case in Germany since 1945 and involves more than three billion euros. The focus is on the Austrian Markus Braun. He and two co-defendants are being tried. As reported, former sales manager Jan Marsalek is still in hiding.

The prosecutor accuses Braun and his two co-defendants of forming a criminal gang, falsifying the company’s balance sheets and defrauding lenders out of 3.1 billion euros. Before the group’s bankruptcy in the summer of 2020, the board had admitted that no proceeds of 1.9 billion euros had been found, which would have come from transactions with partner companies and would have been posted to trust accounts in Southeast Asia. A large part of this trade went through Dubai.

Brown is in prison
Ex-CEO Braun has so far dismissed the allegations. According to his own statement, he was not involved and himself became a victim of criminal machinations in his company. His co-defendant Oliver Bellenhaus, former head of the Wirecard subsidiary in Dubai, is said to have embezzled billions of euros. At the start of the trial in Munich on Thursday, Braun only confirmed his personal details. “Absolutely right,” said the manager, according to the dpa news agency, when asked if he was being held in Bavaria’s largest prison, the JVA Stadelheim. He should then first comment on the content allegations next week.

He gets all the time for that, because there are 100 days of negotiations on the program. The main plan for the first day was to read the 89-page indictment for five hours. Conflicting statements from the suspects were foreseeable even before the trial began. According to the defense, Oliver Bellenhaus wants to take his responsibility and testify cooperatively. He serves as a key witness for the public prosecutor’s office and, like Braun, is in pre-trial detention. The third suspect is the former chief accountant of the Wirecard Group. It is believed he will refuse to testify.

Verdict no earlier than 2024
A first-instance ruling will not follow until 2024 at the earliest. The investigations into the former German payment processor and financial services provider have not yet been completed, even though the process has now started. The British daily Financial Times had detected suspected manipulation before the bankruptcy in 2020. There were doubts about the company’s balance sheets. Without the alleged proceeds from the third-party trade, the company would have had a deficit, prosecutor Matthias Bühring said on Thursday. Billions in loans were required “to prevent the collapse of the company,” the indictment said.

Former head of sales Marsalek is still on the run. The Austrian could have gone into hiding in Moscow.

Source: Krone

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