Status: 12/12/2022 12:33 p.m
In the Wirecard trial, the defense attorney for the accused ex-CEO Braun rejected the allegations of the public prosecutor and accused her of serious errors in the investigation. He asked for the proceedings to be suspended.
Former Wirecard boss Markus Braun and his lawyers want more time to review the documents. His defense attorney Alfred Dierlamm announced an application before the Munich Regional Court to suspend the fraud process against Braun and two other ex-managers of the insolvent payment service provider. The background was “the files that were poured on our desks,” he said on the second day of the trial at the beginning of his statement, which was scheduled to last around two hours.
Braun is therefore currently not in a position to testify. The 53-year-old Austrian has been in custody for almost two and a half years.
Ex-boss Braun sees himself as a victim
According to the indictment, the Munich public prosecutor’s office believes Braun to be the head of a criminal gang that has falsified Wirecard’s balance sheets for years and invented bogus transactions worth billions. In this way, Wirecard cheated banks and other lenders by more than three billion euros.
Braun denies that. He sees himself as a victim of managers around the fugitive ex-CEO Jan Marsalek, who would have set aside billions.
“Prejudged like no other client in 30 years”
His defense attorney Dierlamm said that since the collapse of Wirecard in the summer of 2020, Braun had been prejudiced like no other of his clients in the past 30 years. “The prejudice is unprecedented and formative for this process.” Dierlamm continued to argue that Braun held on to his Wirecard shares “with the full conviction of the value of his portfolio”. He didn’t sell a single file, but instead charged his Wirecard share with a real estate loan – for “the property where his family lives”.
Braun himself arranged for the auditing and consulting firm KPMG to carry out a forensic investigation into the events at Wirecard. “It’s an absolutely absurd and absurd notion that a gang leader would act like this,” said Dierlamm. After Marsalek’s escape, the public prosecutor’s office was under pressure to succeed. It was clear: “Markus Braun had to be behind bars.”
Defense attorney accuses key witnesses
Dierlamm also tried to shake the credibility of the prosecutor’s key witness. He attacked the accused ex-governor of Wirecard in Dubai, Oliver Bellenhaus, frontally in court. His statements to the public prosecutor’s office are not credible and implausible. “Bellenhaus is not a key witness,” said Dierlamm. “Bellenhaus is the main perpetrator of a gang” whose sole aim was to divert and embezzle funds from the company.
Braun insists that Wirecard’s lucrative business with third-party partners in Asia – contrary to what Bellenhaus claims – actually existed after 2015. This is also evident from the bank statements of the third-party partners in Germany, which were only checked later by the public prosecutor’s office. It documents deposits of one billion euros between 2016 and 2020. “Absolutely zero euros, as Mr. Bellenhaus lied to the public prosecutor’s office,” said Dierlamm. 750 million euros flowed to four companies controlled by Bellenhaus alone.
According to Dierlamm, none of the 450 witnesses heard accused Braun. There is no email, no chat message that proves Braun was a perpetrator, said the defense attorney. He sees Bellenhaus as significantly involved in the embezzlement of billions and emphasized: “Mr. Braun does not appear in these shadow structures in any way.”
100 process days scheduled
The fourth criminal chamber of the Munich I Regional Court opened the process last week. In addition to Braun and Bellenhaus, Wirecard’s former chief accountant, Stephan von Erffa, is also accused. The court has set a good 100 days for the process, and the process is expected to last until 2024.