Markus Braun as a victim of Jan Marsalek? Prosecutor dismantles defense strategy of ex

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Defendant Braun (right), defense attorney Dierlamm (archive image): "Of course, we won't leave it in the room"

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CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP

For a long time, the public prosecutor's office has remained silent in the Wirecard trial – now it is settling accounts with the line of defense of ex-CEO Markus Braun. His lawyers had presented a version of events in recent months, which the prosecutor's office now sharply rejects. Senior public prosecutor Matthias Bühring spoke of an "alternative scenario" that the defense around the Wiesbaden star lawyer Alfred Dierlamm was opening up in order to "stylize Braun as a victim". They are looking for guilt in other defendants and accused, as well as in the public prosecutor's office and even in the court, and want to deal with facts that are not relevant to the trial.

The trial against Braun and two other former managers of the Aschheim-based financial group began last December. Braun denies all allegations made against him. Since the reading of the indictment, the public prosecutor's office had largely restrained itself in the trial and only commented on individual facts. Braun's defense lawyers around Dierlamm had filed extensive so-called motions for evidence in mid-July to substantiate their view of the scandal. The public prosecutor's office commented on these applications in writing on 160 pages, a summary of which Bühring presented in court.

The defense and the prosecution are essentially arguing about the same key question since the beginning of the investigation in the summer of 2020: Did Wirecard's so-called third-party partner business exist or not? Wirecard operated this business ostensibly in order to be able to process payments via external partner companies in more remote markets – especially in Asia – and collected commissions for the referral of customers. The proceeds – at a peak of around two billion euros – were to be held in escrow accounts in Singapore and later in the Philippines.

The prosecutors, as well as the insolvency administrator, are convinced that the third-party partner business did not exist for the most part and that there was no money in the escrow accounts.

Braun and Dierlamm, on the other hand, claim that this deal did indeed exist, but that the partners, together with the fugitive ex-board member Jan Marsalek, made common cause and, without Braun's knowledge, smuggled the money past Wirecard via shadow companies and managed it into their own pockets. They have submitted extensive e-mails, bank statements and other material to the court and requested witnesses to substantiate their account.

However, the public prosecutor's office considers the request for evidence to be inadmissible for formal reasons alone, the defense does not add up figures correctly and does not make it clear with which evidence which of its allegations should be concretely substantiated. Dierlamm, for his part, had repeatedly accused the prosecutors of having sloppily and incompletely investigated and ignored extensive payment flows.

Missing the point of the indictment

Prosecutor Bühring now stated that Braun's and Dierlamm's account completely missed the point of the indictment. After all, the defense also assumes that the two billion euros were not in the trust accounts. However, this is decisive, for example, for the accusation of fraud and market manipulation – and not the question of whether the money was somewhere else. It is also irrelevant whether Braun knew about the "alternative scenario", i.e. the embezzlement of funds by the alleged partners via shadow companies, because that was not the subject of the indictment.

Bühring was particularly harsh in attacking the defense's narrative that Marsalek and allied third-party partners had diverted proceeds from payment processing to lucrative online merchants that would actually have been granted to Wirecard. The chief prosecutor cited the example of such a dealer who apparently operated several child pornography websites. How such a merchant could be "regarded as valuable" and cited as evidence of embezzlement to the detriment of Wirecard was "incomprehensible". Apparently, there was a willingness in the company to process payments for "gambling, pirated copies or even child pornography".

The public prosecutor's office made it clear that it suspects money laundering in these and many other cases. For years, the authority has also been investigating this suspicion, which is not the subject of the ongoing court case. There had been "a coexistence of money laundering, accounting fraud and embezzlement". In procedural circles, it is said that further charges are to be expected, the public prosecutor's office still leads numerous defendants, and further allegations could also be made against the managers who have already been charged.

Braun lawyer Dierlamm announced that the defense wanted to comment on the statements of the prosecution. "Of course, we won't leave it in the room," he said. Judge Markus Födisch prevented an immediate reaction ("We're not playing ping-pong here now"), but wants to give Dierlamm the opportunity to reply at a later date. On Thursday, Dierlamm first filed new motions for evidence to substantiate Braun's account.