Tough connections – Wirecard trial: not a star witness, but a perpetrator

Hard bandage from Alfred Dierlamm, Markus Braun’s lawyer during the Wirecard trial in Munich. It wasn’t his client, the 53-year-old accused Austrian, who was the “bad boy” who falsified balance sheets and made sham transactions worth billions until the stock market darling went bankrupt, it was the star witness – Oliver Bellenhaus, Wirecard governor in Dubai.

Braun kept his shares until the end and even had the audit performed by KPMG. And the business with external partners – contrary to what the key witness claims – did exist. Payments of EUR 1 billion (!) are documented until 2020 – EUR 750 million went to four companies controlled by Bellenhaus. For Braun’s defender, Bellenhaus is therefore less of a star witness than a perpetrator.

False statements and biased researchers
Both the investigative committee in the German Bundestag, the Munich public prosecutor’s office and the higher regional court, which placed Markus Braun in pre-trial detention more than two years ago, are said to have “sucked” a false statement from Bellenhaus. The lawyer accuses the investigators of “bias” – and wants to suspend the fraud trial. He needs more time “for the files that have been deposited here for us on the table.” His client is by no means the “head of the gang”, he is said to be the fugitive former Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek, also Austrian . Because this would have saved the billions…