Markus Braun Denies Any Acknowledgment in the Wirecard Trial
The Austrian businessman Markus Braun is the main defendant in the whole Wirecard-Scandal. Now he testified for the first time in court. He denied any acknowledgment of alleged crime in the company, which contradicted the testimonials of key witness Oliver Bellenhaus.
The Main Defendant of the Wirecard Case Markus Braun Testified in Front of the Court in Munich for the First Time. / Picture: © Europol / 2021 Europe's most wanted
In the trial of the alleged billion-euro fraud at the former German Stock Index group Wirecard, former CEO Markus Braun rejects all allegations of the prosecution. "I did not know anything about counterfeiting or embezzlement," Braun said on Monday before the fourth chamber of the Munich Regional Court. "I didn't form a gang with anyone either," emphasized Braun in his first statement on the allegations since the trial began in December, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
According to ORF, Braun's defense attorneys denied the allegations in the process. The missing money is said to have been put aside by Bellenhaus and other criminals in the company without Braun's knowledge. Undoubted written evidence that proves Braun's complicity has not yet surfaced. In his Monday statement, Braun described the day the company collapsed financially. The collapse of the former German Stock Index group in June 2020 was “a real shock experience” for him, according to Braun. "The 18.6. is still a day of deepest regret for me" - the day on which the Wirecard board had to admit that 1.9 billion euros could not be found. The money was allegedly held in escrow accounts in the Philippines and is still missing to this day.
As reported by Finanzen.net, The business IT specialist has worked at Wirecard since the early 2000s. According to Braun, the company, which was still small at the time, earned its money mainly with commission fees for processing credit card payments on the Internet for adult content and games. Braun converted Wirecard into a listed company, and the climax of the meteoric rise as a German technology miracle was its inclusion in the German Stock Exchange Top league of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2018. There, Wirecard was at times worth more than 20 billion euros, and Braun, as the largest shareholder, became extremely rich.
However, as stated in ORF, according to the indictment, it was based on lies and deceit. The Munich public prosecutor accuses Braun, his two co-defendants, and several other suspects of commercial gang fraud. They are said to have invented sales in the billions, falsified the balance sheets, and cheated the company's lenders by more than three billion euros.
According to Kurier, Manager Oliver Bellenhaus, who worked for Wirecard in Dubai until 2020, appears in the proceedings as a key witness for the prosecution and has heavily accused Braun in the course of the process so far. According to his statement, Braun was a dominating boss who was fully involved in the billion-dollar fraud. The former CEO has been in custody since the summer of 2020. The former CEO Braun has been in custody since the summer of 2020. Marsalek is on the run and is probably in Russia. He is set up by Braun's defense as the main actor in the cause. The key witness, on the other hand, is a "professional liar".