Ex-boss Markus Braun rejects accusations

Markus Brown

The former CEO wants to describe his “very personal perceptions” and the history of the company in the Wirecard process.

(Photo: dpa)

Munich Markus Braun begins his statement with regret. The collapse of Wirecard in June 2020 not only caused pain to investors, customers and business partners. He also suffered from the collapse, explains the long-time Wirecard boss: “June 18, 2020 is a day of deepest regret, a day of pain.”

But no matter how much the demise of Wirecard tormented him – Braun doesn’t want to be responsible for it. “I had no knowledge of counterfeiting and embezzlement,” says the manager, who led Wirecard for 18 years.

Braun spoke in detail for the first time this Monday in the process that has been running since December. The public prosecutor accuses him of accounting fraud, market manipulation, breach of trust and gang fraud. She relies on the co-defendant star witness Oliver Bellenhaus, who has heavily incriminated Braun. According to the manager who worked for Wirecard in Dubai until 2020, Braun was a dominating boss who was fully involved in the billion dollar fraud. Braun’s defense attorneys dismissed the allegations as lies.

Wirecard process: Ex-boss Markus Braun rejects all charges

Braun has been in custody since the financial group collapsed two and a half years ago and has only briefly spoken publicly twice since then. In a Bundestag investigative committee, he presented himself as a victim of fraud. At the beginning of the trial in December, he had only confirmed his personal details.

Braun has now announced that he wants to describe his “very personal perceptions” and the history of the company.

Braun described that he was never part or even the head of a criminal gang that defrauded business partners and investors of Wirecard of billions of euros. He did not know anything about the criminal activities of his employee Oliver Bellenhaus and the former Asia boss Jan Marsalek.

He always believed in the existence of Wirecard’s so-called third-party partner business and also assumed a “complete digital business”. For loans of more than 100 million euros, he assumed that these would be used “properly” by the borrowers. The granting of loans to letterbox companies with names like OCAP and Ruprecht was not preceded by infidelity, but by careful examination in advance. “I had no knowledge that these funds were intended to be embezzled.”

Braun also contradicted another point in the nearly 500-page indictment by the Munich public prosecutor before the Munich Regional Court. He denies having deceived the capital markets with an incorrect ad hoc announcement about the special audit of Wirecard’s third-party partner business.

According to critical media reports from the “Financial Times”, auditors from KPMG had examined Wirecard’s third-party partner business in 2020 and could not find any evidence of its existence. After completing the examination, Braun published a message from Wirecard in which the results of the investigation had been misrepresented, according to the prosecutors. Braun now explained in court: The wording in the notification was “in the legally compliant discretion of the board”.

More: “Liar” – Braun’s defense attacks Wirecard key witnesses

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