The former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun is not released even after a year and a half in custody.
(Photo: Reuters)
Düsseldorf, Munich The statements of his defense lawyers were again unsuccessful in the end: the former Wirecard boss Markus Braun remains in custody. This was ordered by the second criminal senate of the Munich Higher Regional Court after a detention check, as a court spokesman announced.
For Braun it will be the second Christmas in a row behind bars. The 52-year-old has been in prison in Augsburg-Gablingen since July 22, 2020. The public prosecutor’s office accuses him of commercial gang fraud, embezzlement of corporate assets, falsification of accounts and manipulation of the Wirecard share price.
The OLG has already checked three times whether the reasons for detention still exist – and confirmed this each time. The court, like the Munich I public prosecutor’s office, still sees urgent suspicions and a risk of flight.
Almost everything now suggests that Braun will remain in custody until a possible criminal trial. The Munich public prosecutor is currently working flat out on an indictment. It could be in the first quarter of 2022. Should the Munich Regional Court then allow the lawsuit, the main hearing could begin in late summer.
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The accusations of the prosecutors weigh heavily: Braun and other Wirecard managers are said to have booked billions in bogus deals over the years in order to make the Aschheim-based payment service provider more financially strong and thus be able to generate loans and their own income. In June 2020, the then Dax group then had to file for bankruptcy after it had emerged that an alleged billion assets in trust accounts in Asia did not exist. Banks, investors and investors lost billions.
For the prosecutors, Braun remains the key figure
The public prosecutor sees Braun as one of the main culprits for the large-scale fraud. For the investigators, Braun is the man who acted “within the gang as a control and steering authority”.
They base their allegations, among other things, on the information provided by a key witness who is also in custody. Among other things, he reported that the group had already made the decision in 2015 to “inflate” the Wirecard balance sheet and sales volume. In his statements, he also burdened Markus Braun considerably.
As a result, Braun was arrested again in July 2020 after having been arrested once before. However, he was released after just one day on bail of five million euros.
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Braun vehemently rejects the allegations of the key witness and the public prosecutors. He filed two detention complaints and testified in a series of interrogations to investigators. Most recently, his defense team around lawyer Alfred Dierlamm delivered several long statements on the allegations.
Braun’s advisors do not get away with their version
Braun and his advisors argue that the former CEO was betrayed by a criminal gang around ex-Asia director Jan Marsalek. The Asian business is at the center of the multi-billion dollar fraud. Since the fraud became known, Marselek has been on the run, his whereabouts are unknown.
According to Braun’s and Dierlamm’s theory, the Marsalek group created shadow structures through which funds were channeled out of the Wirecard group. Revenues from Wirecard’s third-party business in Asia have therefore been diverted, for example to companies in the Caribbean. In fact, Braun, who has since become a billionaire through the rise of Wirecard, is himself a victim of the fraud.
The problem with it: Numerous investigators, some of whom have been dealing with the processing of the scandal for months, consider the third-party business to be largely invented. There is no evidence for the assets allegedly in trust accounts of almost two billion euros. Most recently, Wirecard insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé stated in an interim report that Wirecard “invented assets in the billions indirectly”.
More: The protocol of the failure: The Handelsblatt publishes the secret report of the special auditor Martin Wambach.