Wirecard Boss Rejects All Charges in Germany’s Fraud Trial of the Century

Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun denied he was part of a “criminal gang” Monday. He was testifying inwards a Muenchen courtroom in Germany’s biggest postwar humbug trial.

It was the first-class honours degree clip the 53-year-old Austrian had spoken at length inwards public since his 2020 check on charges that followed the spectacular prostration of fintech heavyweight Wirecard.

Dressed inwards his trademark shameful sports jacket o'er a blackened polo-neck sweater, Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun denied well-read the counterfeiting and peculation that had occurred in the lead-up to its collapse.

Braun is on trial in Munich with deuce other former Wirecard execs, King Oliver Bellenhaus and Stephan von Erffa. Charges include market place use and “gang-related fraud.”

The visitation is expected to tally into 2024. Each defendant faces upward to 15 years inward prison house if convicted.

$2 Billion Negro Hole

Once a processor of online gambling and porn transactions, Wirecard became the leading light up of High German fintech with a US$28 one thousand million market place cap. That was until a $2 1000000000000 hole out appeared on its equipoise sheet.

Braun described that mean solar day Monday as “a shock” and a “day of pain” and radius of his “profound regret” for employees and shareholders. Until that moment, he said, he believed he was inward bill of a completely logical business.

In June 2020, auditor Ernst & Pres Young reported that the US$2 billion in cash in balances mentioned inward Wirecards’ accounts appeared to follow missing. The money was supposed to sit around in legal guardian accounts at 2 Philippine banks. But the banks denied Wirecard was still a client.

Days later, the get on admitted the money “likely ne'er existed.”

Prosecutors lay claim Wernher von Braun and his codefendants cooked the books and invented bogus revenue streams to pee-pee a losing accompany seem profitable.

Braun’s account statement is entirely different than the depict painted by his dude defendant, Bellenhaus, who also happens to live the government’s star witness.

‘Autocratic’ CEO

The former chief of Wirecard’s Dubai subsidiary has admitted his complicity inwards the accountancy dupery connive and uttered “deep regret.”

But testifying in December, Bellenhaus said he was playing come out of blind trueness to Braun, whom he described as an “autocratic chief executive” who “gave the marching orders.”

Bellenhaus told the tribunal that Braun knew everything that went on at Wirecard and was possessed(p) with creating the fantasy that the fellowship was more successful than it really was.

Russian Intelligence

Braun’s effectual team up claims Bellenhaus is an unreliable informant and “a briny culprit inwards a work party whose sole take was to malversate money.” Meanwhile, they are pointing the fingerbreadth at the company’s former COO, Jan Marsalek, as the scheme’s mastermind.

On Monday, Wernher von Braun said he had admired Marsalek and had been instrumental inwards promoting him to the board. He claimed he scarcely knew Bellenhaus, adding he had wanted to flak him when he went on holiday during a KPMG special scrutinise into the accounts as the keep company teetered on the brink.

Marsalek fled Federal Republic of Germany as Wirecard collapsed, traveling to Byelarus and so onto Moscow. He is believed to have got connections to Russian intelligence agencies and is I of the world’s most wanted fugitives.

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