100-day Wirecard trial: ex-boss Braun in distress Orcas trapped in drifting ice off the Japanese coast – but there is hope

In the Wirecard trial in Munich, ex-boss Markus Braun declared himself innocent and rejected all charges. On the hundredth day of the trial it is clear: the procedure is not going according to plan.

The defense of Markus Braun, who has been in custody for more than three and a half years, filed a claim for bias against chairman Markus Födisch and his two evaluators on Wednesday. Lawyer Nico Werning wanted to read the motion in the room due to bias, but the chairman refused.

“The way you conceal the procedure here defies description,” Werning then accused the chairman. “They just don’t want the public to know what’s happening here.”

Braun is the only one still in custody

The heated discussion was caused by the chamber’s decision to suspend the arrest warrant against co-suspect and key witness Oliver Bellenhaus. This makes Braun the only one of the three accused managers who is still in custody.

After fourteen months and a hundred days of trial, there is still no verdict in sight in what is considered the largest fraud case in Germany since 1945. But lawyers for both Braun and Bellenhaus see the release of the key witness as a sign of the direction in which things are heading. process develops.

Bellenhaus’ lawyer Florian Eder spoke in court about a “turning point”. During a break in the proceedings, Werning accused the judges of arriving at one version. “One version” in this case means Bellenhaus’s version, not Braun’s.

Unusual lawsuit

The Wirecard trial is extraordinary in several respects: it is not just the accusation that a gang of fraudsters was at work in the boardroom of a DAX company that is extraordinary. The fraud damage for defrauded lenders can amount to an immense amount of three billion euros.

It is also unusual for two accused managers to describe events in court in such contrasting terms as Braun and Bellenhaus. The key witness admitted most of the charges and accused Braun of being an accomplice.

The former CEO and his lawyers do not deny that criminals were at work at Wirecard. But according to his lawyers, former sales boss Jan Marsalek, who has been in hiding since 2020, Bellenhaus and accomplices managed to get real billions from real companies on the property through a network of shadow companies, without Braun’s knowledge or intervention. Defense attorneys accuse Bellenhaus of lying.

The chief defender criticizes the judiciary in Munich

Judges must conduct criminal proceedings impartially, without favoring or disadvantaging the suspect. The request for bias amounts to an accusation that the chamber is biased against Braun. Immediately after Bellenhaus’s release, Braun’s lead lawyer Alfred Dierlamm accused the Munich judiciary of a “dirty deal behind closed doors.”

The court rejected this in a separate statement: “On the detention review date on February 5, 2024, no agreement had been made about the criminal case. Only the requirements of the arrest warrant and the conditions for the stay of execution were negotiated.”

So far, no document has emerged in the trial that would unequivocally prove Braun’s involvement in fraud. Not a single witness accused the Austrian face-to-face in court of being a fraudster. But many witnesses in court paint a picture of a company in which things were strange and questionable.

So far no trace of the missing billions

Wirecard curator Michael Jaffé has so far found no trace of the missing billions, and his assessment of the actual payment flows could be of great importance. But it will likely be months before Jaffé appears as a witness in the underground courtroom of Stadelheim prison.

According to the court spokesperson, it is expected that the curator will be heard as a witness towards the end of the taking of evidence. It is impossible to predict whether the procedure will be completed this year, according to a court spokesperson. (sda/awp/dpa)