Alfred Dierlamm and his colleagues arrived this Thursday with heavy luggage: three thick files filled to the brim with briefs, e-mails, bank statements and tips from anonymous tipsters. It is the result of months of work by Markus Braun’s defenders. This includes everything to practically turn the entire previous Wirecard process upside down. And there is more to come.
More than seven months after the start of the process, lawyer Dierlamm is starting his long-awaited sweeping move: he explains that his evaluation will give the entire process a new direction and the Wirecard scandal a completely different reading. The three file folders are just the beginning. Material that nobody had previously found or evaluated, not the auditors and special auditors who have been coming and going at Wirecard for years, not the police and prosecutors who have been investigating for three years, not the journalists who are on the scandalous group research, not the insolvency administrator, who is supposed to recover as much money as possible on behalf of the creditors.
Why? “Because there really wasn’t any real clarification and obviously it wasn’t wanted either,” Dierlamm claimed on Thursday – neither then in the Bundestag investigative committee nor today in the court. What really shows is that there is “not a single indication in all the emails that Doctor Braun was involved in the gang’s machinations or even knew about it”. However, the defense attorney also complains in another context that it is a “significant problem” that masses of data – especially e-mails – have been removed from the accounts. And when things get exciting, it’s always said: “Let’s switch to Telegram.” Many of the chat messages there have also long since been deleted.
“There was business, there were also billions”
At the heart of all this is the so-called third-party business in Asia, which appears to have brought in billions over the years. Officially, it worked like this: In countries where Wirecard did not have the appropriate licenses, or in transactions that seemed too disreputable, customers were outsourced to so-called third-party partners. These were apparently independent companies in Dubai, Singapore or the Philippines. They should do the work, provide Wirecard with the technology and collect commissions. The supposed proceeds from this business were crucial for Wirecard rising from insignificance up to the Dax. And at the forefront of this success story over the years has been Markus Braun, today the main accused.
When he had to admit a good three years ago that almost two billion euros did not exist in trust accounts in Asia, Wirecard went under spectacularly. Among other things, the indictment accuses Braun of being the head of a gang that invented the entire Asian business over the years in order to pretend a flourishing business and relieve creditors and shareholders of billions. It is probably the most serious allegation in the indictment, if Braun were found guilty on all counts, he could go to prison for up to 15 years in extreme cases.
Alfred Dierlamm, on the other hand, interprets the story quite differently. Since 2010, there has been a huge need worldwide to process payments from merchants with high-risk businesses such as porn or gambling. That’s when the fraud began – hatched by Jan Marsalek, then number two at Wirecard and since the collapse on a film-ready escape, and Oliver Bellenhaus, once the group’s governor in Dubai and today the key witness in this process. “Supposed key witness,” as Dierlamm says.
Their goal was “to enrich themselves past Wirecard” by founding companies and redirecting the proceeds from third-party business there. Wirecard was only left with the role of technical service provider, while Bellenhaus and Marsalek collected the brokerage commissions. For years it was a “money printing machine”. So that this would not be noticed, the gang invented sales behind Braun’s back and shifted them to the supposed trust accounts far away from the group’s headquarters. “There was business, there were also billions,” says Dierlamm. “You don’t have to travel the world to find them either.”
So he presents page after page of names and figures: from companies and entrepreneurs from the demimonde of the Internet, from possible perpetrators, helpers and straw people inside and outside the group, from transfers and accounts. And again and again Dierlamm refers to the anonymous sources that would have turned to him, sometimes only with their version of the story, sometimes also with documents. Everything paints a uniform picture, says Braun’s defense attorney: Braun does not appear anywhere, and there are no indications against the former CFO Burkhard Ley or Stephan E., formerly chief accountant at Wirecard and today the third accused in this process.
Dierlamm focuses primarily on nine companies. All of them would have served in one way or another over the years to siphon real money from real business. So he puts dozens of motions for evidence to the court for each of these companies, a total of well over 400 – that alone probably takes months of work.
Setback in the fight for money
Whether this will actually happen is not only decided here, in the underground courtroom of the Stadelheim correctional facility. Because while Dierlamm begins his lecture in Munich, the district court in Düsseldorf is deciding who will have to pay for all the expenses in the future. Wirecard once protected its executives with a so-called D&O insurance with up to 150 million euros. So far, this “manager liability” has covered the legal costs of Braun and some of his former colleagues, but the basic insurance budget of at least 15 million euros is rapidly coming to an end.
As a result, the US insurer Chubb no longer feels obliged to do so. In the next step, the insurer Swiss Re would have to step in, allegedly with a pot of ten million euros. Such a division is common in view of the financial risks. In the Wirecard case, however, Swiss Re is now refusing to take over. Braun and his lawyers, on the other hand, applied for a temporary injunction in Düsseldorf, saying it was urgent.
Swiss Re, on the other hand, argues with a clause in the contract that basically says that breaches of duty that are the same or related to each other are considered one insured event. Because a class action lawsuit has been pending against Markus Braun in the USA since 2019, Swiss Re insists that the insured event occurred in 2019. This is important. Because the contracts do not start until 2020, which means that the damage event occurred before the insurance began. In other words, we are not responsible.
Apparently that worked. Last week, the presiding judge indicated that Braun and his lawyers had “no chance of success” – and that’s how it happened. The court also pointed out that an injunction was only intended for particularly urgent cases. But Braun should have foreseen that he would have problems with the insurance company and could complain earlier in the usual way. After all, Swiss Re had already rejected the payment in 2020 and even several times. Braun and his lawyers can now appeal the decision. Quite likely that they won’t give up there either.