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MUNICH – Wirecard’s former boss on Monday denied all wrongdoing over the collapse of the funds firm as he took to the stand for the primary time in Germany’s largest post-war fraud trial, accusing different managers of scheming behind his again.
Wearing his trademark black turtleneck and rimless spectacles, Markus Braun, 53, expressed his “deepest remorse” over Wirecard’s demise however mentioned he had no information of any forgery or embezzlement and believed he was working a wholesome enterprise.
The Austrian-born former chief govt and two different ex-Wirecard managers Oliver Bellenhaus and Stephan von Erffa are on trial on prices together with market manipulation and fraud and resist 15 years every in jail if convicted.
Former chief working officer Jan Marsalek is a global fugitive on Europe’s most wished listing whose whereabouts are unknown.
Braun has been in custody because the 2020 collapse of Wirecard, which shook Germany’s enterprise institution, placing politicians who backed it and regulators who took years to research allegations towards the agency beneath intense scrutiny.
“I had no information of counterfeiting or embezzlement,” Braun advised the courtroom in Munich, describing the invention of 1.9 billion euro ($2 billion) gap in Wirecard’s steadiness sheet as a “day of ache” for shareholders and workers.
Prosecutors accuse the defendants of being in a gang that invented huge sums of phantom revenues by way of bogus transactions with accomplice firms to mislead collectors and traders.
Braun’s legal professionals have beforehand alleged that Bellenhaus was the principle perpetrator of fraud on the firm, which started processing funds for pornography and on-line playing and rose to be a blue chip DAX firm price $28 billion.
‘NOTHING TO HIDE’
Bellenhaus, who turned a key witness after turning himself in to the authorities, has painted Braun as an “absolutist CEO” calling the photographs on the coronary heart of an unlimited swindle.
In his most detailed statements about Wirecard’s collapse since his arrest, Braun pushed again towards that characterisation, describing his management as collegiate.
As an alternative, Braun accused Marsalek of setting up a “fantasy” that Wirecard’s funds had been wholesome whereas he and Bellenhaus tried to impede Braun’s makes an attempt to rent KPMG as an exterior auditor as allegations of wrongdoing on the agency mounted.
By bringing in KPMG, the purpose was to clear up “as soon as and for all” allegations about steadiness sheet manipulation, Braun mentioned. “I advised Marsalek we’ve got nothing to cover.”
When 1.9 billion euros went lacking from the steadiness sheet, “Marsalek was very intelligent and understood the best way to clarify that it was a mistake,” Braun mentioned, talking in the identical calm and concentrated voice with which he used to deal with investor conferences and press conferences.
Issues got here to a head in February 2020, Braun mentioned, when Marsalek got here to his workplace and revealed he had shifted billions of euros from Singapore to accounts within the Philippines with out the information of Braun or the corporate’s chief monetary officer.
“I didn’t scream. It’s not my type,” Braun mentioned, including “I can bear in mind asking him if he had misplaced his thoughts.”
Braun mentioned he had resolved to fireplace Bellenhaus and clip Marsalek’s powers, although the corporate collapsed earlier than he did so.
Describing Marsalek as clever however considerably withdrawn, Braun mentioned he was solely later made conscious of allegations within the media that Marsalek had ties to the safety providers and ran a shadow enterprise operation from a Munich villa.
Braun additionally batted away recommendations that he had requested personal safety contractors to harass journalists who had been investigating his firm.
He contrasted Wirecard’s demise with accounts of his early years on the firm, describing a struggling startup the place he and different managers pulled all-nighters and labored with a way of mission. “There was in actuality no life outdoors the corporate,” he mentioned. — Reuters
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