Munich In the Wirecard criminal trial, the Munich district court does not want to make a short-term decision on whether to read out a letter from the ex-board member Jan Marsalek who went into hiding. “We will take our time to think about how we can solve this procedurally,” said presiding judge Markus Födisch at the court hearing on Thursday. He wanted to discuss this with the other judges in his criminal chamber.
Marsalek surprisingly intervened in the process with a letter from his lawyer to the court, sending the first known sign of life since his escape three years ago. The defenders of the accused former Wirecard boss Markus Braun had requested the letter to be read out on Wednesday as evidence to exonerate Braun.
In their application, the lawyers themselves pointed out possible obstacles. The Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that witnesses must normally appear in court in person. However, Braun’s lawyers argued that the letter should be treated as testimony by Marsalek, even though the letter was not written by himself but by his lawyer.
Wirecard collapsed in June 2020 when it was revealed that trust accounts in Asia were missing 1.9 billion euros. Ex-boss Braun and two other ex-managers are in the dock for accounting fraud and gang fraud. They are said to have invented billions of dollars.
Braun, on the other hand, says the money existed and was stashed away behind his back. Braun’s lawyers quoted passages from Marsalek’s letter on Wednesday that are intended to support this account.
They had argued violently with the judge about the question of a full reading of the letter. The motives behind Marsalek’s letter are unclear.
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