Munich Oliver Bellenhaus has to start a second time. When he first tried to explain himself to the court and the public, he spoke so softly into the microphone that even his words of welcome were barely audible.
But it doesn’t get much better after that either. The key witness in the Wirecard scandal speaks quickly and extremely quietly. You can tell that he wants to get everything he has to say over with as quickly as possible. Bellenhaus, pale and balding, looks down, avoiding all eye contact.
“As you may notice, it’s not easy for me,” Bellenhaus begins. “I’m shocked about my own nature,” says Bellenhaus. For years he glossed over the events “to justify my actions”. But in the past two and a half years in custody, one thing has become clear to him: “I deeply regret the accounting scandal and also that I helped create such immense damage. Wirecard was a cancer. There was a system of organized fraud.”
The accused former Wirecard deputy in Dubai will read around 100 pages on this third day of the trial about the billion-euro fraud at Wirecard. After the defense attorneys for the former Wirecard managers had the floor last week, he is the first of the three accused to speak out personally and describe his view of things on the billion-euro fraud.
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Bellenhaus, once responsible for Wirecard, allegedly the biggest profit maker, wants to explain his role, but also that of other managers. Above all, he puts a heavy burden on the co-defendants, ex-Wirecard CEO Markus Braun and ex-chief accountant Stephan von Erffa.
Wirecard process: the indictment is based on statements by Oliver Bellenhaus
Bellenhaus turned himself in to the Munich authorities shortly after Wirecard went bankrupt in the summer of 2020 and gave extensive testimony to the public prosecutor. He has been in custody since July 2020, and the public prosecutor’s office has largely based the charge on his statements.
This Monday he first describes how he became part of the fraud system that caused Wirecard to fall. After 2013, he quickly advanced into the inner circle at Wirecard, reports Bellenhaus. At the beginning there were small border crossings. “I quickly brushed my concerns aside.” He still hoped it was a temporary thing. But “little lies turned into big lies,” says Bellenhaus. “It was a hoax from the start,” says Bellenhaus. “At some point we believed in it ourselves.”
The key witness in the Wirecard scandal spoke quickly and extremely quietly.
(Photo: dpa)
The thing he’s referring to was the third-party business that Wirecard allegedly made billions from. Officially, Wirecard worked with these third-party acquirers, or TPA companies for short, because the payment service provider did not have its own licenses in the relevant regions of the world. Unofficially, the third-party partners were a kind of parking lot for sales that Wirecard didn’t want on their own books.
It was about payment processing for porn sites, in 2020 the group had to admit that 1.9 billion euros from the third-party business did not exist. The public prosecutor is convinced that the third-party business never existed and relies heavily on the information provided by Bellenhaus.
Ex-CEO Markus Braun and his defense attorneys, on the other hand, are certain that the deal existed. They accuse Bellenhaus, together with other gang members, of having channeled the funds from the third-party business out of the group.
More on the Wirecard scandal, Markus Braun and Oliver Bellenhaus:
“Who were the protagonists?” asks Bellenhaus and immediately gives the answer himself. “Dr. Braun was the core that everything was geared towards.” He was an “absolute CEO”. “If he said something, that’s how it was done.”
The former head of Asia Jan Marsalek was the charmer and the former CFO Burkhard Ley the calming influence. Ex-chief accountant von Erffa, on the other hand, was often inappropriate in his tone and allowed a certain superiority to shine through.
Marsalek, Ley and von Erffa gave him guidelines, according to Bellenhaus. Von Erffa and he, Bellenhaus, were the operative pillars for the manipulation. “Nothing brings people together more than crimes committed together. Blind loyalty to Braun and Marsalek got me in jail.”
While he reports all this, Braun and Erffa appear unimpressed. Braun’s lawyer Alfred Dierlamm shakes his head and buries his face in his hands. Marsalek is on the run, Ley rejects all allegations.
“Wirecard burned in all areas”
Bellenhaus then goes into the details of the time. “The point of no return was already far behind us in 2017. Wirecard was a cancer that grew undetected for a long time,” says Bellenhaus. Bellenhaus is convinced that if the group had been as creative in developing new products as it is in the TPA business, “we wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
Nevertheless, the fraud was carried out amateurishly, and there were numerous errors in the manipulated numbers, says Bellenhaus. The forecasts for the year were adjusted at the end of the year to meet the respective needs and to mislead the auditors. The auditors were presented with the wrong basis for calculating the funds.
At the end of 2018, he realized that the system was no longer sustainable – “Wirecard was on fire in all areas,” says Bellenhaus. It was the time when Wirecard had just been included in the most important German stock index Dax and had risen to become the most valuable German financial group. Braun was “intoxicated” by the growth course. The yardstick was the share price and any means were right for him.
The ex-CEO tried to shield the TPA business. Today, on the other hand, Braun is trying to portray him as a scapegoat, says Bellenhaus.
Markus Braun’s lawyer sharply criticizes the authorities
Braun’s defense attorney Dierlamm had previously accused the former Wirecard managing director in Dubai, Bellenhaus, early in the morning that he was not credible as a key witness and had concealed the embezzlement of millions during the investigation. Dierlamm accuses the public prosecutor of serious mistakes and omissions in the investigation and therefore wants to have the proceedings stopped.
Those involved in the proceedings would be flooded with new documents, said the lawyer – 44,000 PDF pages shortly before the start of the process, and then another 11,000 pages. “The investigations that the public prosecutor’s office has missed in two years of proceedings and are now being carried out parallel to the ongoing main hearing are a bottomless pit,” said the defense attorney.
Dierlamm’s second, equally serious allegation is that the public prosecutor’s office withheld essential documents from the defense. During a search of Bellenhaus’s mother’s house, the public prosecutor found three hard drives that had been hidden in a broom closet. Information on this was also missing in the files. “I’d like to know what’s on the hard drives,” said Dierlamm.
The public prosecutor rejected the criticism. “The files on this indictment are complete,” said the investigating authority on request. The billions in the accounts of former Wirecard business partners cited by Braun and Dierlamm relate to transactions that are not part of the indictment and are therefore irrelevant to the proceedings. The Chamber has not yet decided on the suspension request. This should happen by early 2023. If the court does not suspend the proceedings, Dierlamm announced that Braun could testify in the second half of January.
First of all, Bellenhaus continued his explanation in the afternoon.
More: How Asia board member Jan Marsalek made 315 million euros disappear
First publication: 19.12.2022, 11:51 a.m.