“There was a crisis from then on”: Wirecard witness explains how Marsalek managed to escape

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Shortly before the collapse of the scandalous Wirecard group, former company boss Markus Braun offered Jan Marsalek, the presumed prime suspect, the right excuse to flee abroad.

Former product manager Susanne Steidl recounted the dramatic days in June 2020 as a witness in the Munich Wirecard case on Thursday, when the company funds of 1.9 billion euros allegedly reserved in the Philippines could not be found.

“From that moment there was a crisis”

According to Steidl, it was only then that he and CFO Alexander von Knoop realized the gravity of the situation. 1.9 billion were reportedly held in Philippine escrow accounts. However, the local bank informed the group that the signatures on the contracts were forged.

Steidl reported that the finance manager later came to his office. “Susanne, look, we have a problem,” von Knoop said. “From that moment on, there was a crisis,” the manager recalled.

A trip to the Philippines as a vacuum

Marsalek was responsible for Asia on Wirecard’s board of directors. CEO Braun later said: “Jan, you should fly to the Philippines.” Therefore, Marsalek should personally explain the problem there. It cannot be inferred from Steidl’s testimony that Braun deliberately provided Marsalek with an excuse to flee – he said nothing about it.

On June 18, 2020, Marsalek was suspended. “Then he said goodbye to me, he’s flying to the Philippines and we’ll see you in two weeks,” Steidl said. But Marsalek never got there.

Instead, the executive is said to have fled to Russia via Belarus and is wanted with an arrest warrant. Braun, on the other hand, surrendered to the judiciary as the key witness of the prosecution. Both have been in custody for three years.

Wirecard scam caused billions of dollars in damage

According to the prosecution, a gang of swindlers in Wirecard, with Braun and Marsalek prominently featured, invented phony deals worth billions of dollars. Investigators estimate damage to the group’s lenders at over three billion euros. The accusation is based mainly on the testimony of the other defendant key witness, Oliver Bellenhaus, who is a former Wirecard executive in Dubai.

To Braun, both work and profit were real. Instead, Marsalek, Bellenhaus and their accomplices are said to have diverted and embezzled two billion euros from the group.

The Marsalek letter as a “written witness statement”?

Marsalek recently sent a sensational letter to the court through his lawyer, accusing former employee and key witness Bellenhaus of lying. That’s why Braun’s defense attaches great importance to the letter.

But the judges want to decide after some deliberation whether the letter should be included as a “written witness statement” for the collection of evidence. “I’m not going to break this off my knee at night,” said the presiding judge, Markus Födisch. The key witness’s defense declared the Marsalek letter to be “nonsense”. (sweat/SDA)

Source :Blick