The defense attorney for the former Wirecard CEO complained about the alleged prejudice of his accused in the past few months.
(Photo: Reuters)
Munich Former Wirecard boss Markus Braun and his lawyers want more time to review the documents. His defense attorney Alfred Dierlamm announced on Monday an application to suspend the fraud process against Braun and two other ex-managers of the insolvent payment service provider.
The background was “the files that were poured on our table,” he said on the second day of the trial before the Munich I Regional Court at the beginning of his statement, which was scheduled to last around two hours. Braun is therefore currently not in a position to testify. The 53-year-old has been in custody for almost two and a half years.
According to the indictment, the Munich public prosecutor’s office believes Braun to be the head of a criminal gang that for years falsified the balance sheets of the former stock market darling and invented bogus deals worth billions. Braun denies this and sees himself as a victim of managers around the fugitive ex-CEO Jan Marsalek, who would have set aside billions.
Dierlamm said that since the collapse of Wirecard in the summer of 2020, Braun had been prejudiced like no other of his clients in the past 30 years. “The prejudice is unprecedented and formative for this process.”
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Braun held on to his Wirecard shares “with the full conviction of the value of his portfolio”, said the Wiesbaden lawyer. He did not sell a single file, but rather encumbered his Wirecard share with a real estate loan (liens on property) – for “the property in which his family lives”.
Braun himself had arranged for KPMG to carry out a forensic investigation into what was happening at Wirecard. “It’s an absolutely absurd and absurd notion that a gang leader would act like this,” said Dierlamm.