Wirecard collapsed in the summer of 2020. But the trial surrounding the former DAX group’s accounting fraud case is still ongoing – and could take almost twice as long as originally planned.
The trial surrounding what is probably the largest accounting fraud case in German post-war history could take almost twice as long as originally planned. The fourth criminal chamber of the Munich I Regional Court has scheduled 86 additional trial days for the Wirecard trial until December 19th of this year. A court spokesman said this upon request.
The trial against ex-CEO Markus Braun, key witness Oliver Bellenhaus and the former chief accountant of the DAX company that collapsed in 2020 has been running since December 8th, 2022. The chamber had originally scheduled 100 days of negotiations, the last of which will be January 10th next week would have been.
Did 1.9 billion euros ever exist?
The company collapsed in the summer of 2020 after auditors could not find 1.9 billion euros that should be recorded on the balance sheet. According to the prosecution, the money never existed. Braun and his accomplices are said to have faked fake deals as a criminal gang in order to keep the actually loss-making company afloat.
However, Braun, who was taken into custody in July 2020 – almost three and a half years ago – has declared himself innocent. According to the Austrian manager, the real criminals around the ex-sales director Jan Marsalek, who went into hiding, and the key witness Bellenhaus, are said to have made huge sums of money to the site.
Braun and Bellenhaus blame each other, and none of the witnesses interviewed so far have been able to shed any light on the matter. It is unclear whether the 1.9 billion euros that have been missing since the summer of 2020 ever existed – and if so, who ultimately embezzled the funds. Key witness Bellenhaus, who has also been in custody since July 2020, denies Braun’s allegations.
Difficult clarification
One of the reasons the investigation is so difficult is that the crime scenes were largely in Asia: in Dubai, Singapore, the Philippines and other Asian countries. The court had summoned numerous witnesses from abroad in recent months, but they did not appear.
So far, mainly former employees of the former Wirecard headquarters in Aschheim near Munich have testified. However, Braun’s ex-subordinates stated across the board that they knew nothing about the billion-dollar fraud. The first witnesses in the new year will be the former head of the Wirecard Bank’s legal department on January 10th, followed the following day by a former sales manager.