Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office I brings charges against ex-​Wirecard CEO

This has now been con­firmed by the pub­lic prosecutor’s of­fice in a press release.
Already on Sunday, March 13, 2021, the “Han­dels­blatt”, among oth­ers, re­por­ted that the Mu­nich pub­lic prosecutor’s of­fice had filed charges against former Wir­e­card CEO Dr. Markus Braun more than one and a half years after the col­lapse of the former Dax group.

Also charged are Stephan von Erffa, former head of ac­count­ing at Wir­e­card AG, and Oliver Bel­len­haus, former man­aging dir­ector of Card­Sys­tems Middle East, a Dubai-​based second-​tier sub­si­di­ary of Wir­e­card AG.

The au­thor­it­ies ac­cuse the de­fend­ants of, among other things, pro­fes­sional gang fraud, mis­ap­pro­pri­ation of group as­sets, falsi­fic­a­tion of the bal­ance sheet and ma­nip­u­la­tion of the Wir­e­card share price. The in­vest­ig­at­ors as­sume that Wir­e­card had been post­ing losses since 2015 at the latest. In or­der to cover these up, the so-​called third-​party ac­quirer busi­ness was in­ven­ted, with faked rev­en­ues in­flat­ing the bal­ance sheet total and sales volume. You can find out more about Wirecard’s busi­ness model here.

Jan Marsalek still on the run

In ad­di­tion, Markus Braun is ac­cused of hav­ing pushed through pay­ments in the three-​digit mil­lion range to du­bi­ous part­ners past the Man­age­ment Board and Su­per­vis­ory Board. Braun him­self re­jects the ac­cus­a­tions and sees him­self as a vic­tim of crim­inal mach­in­a­tions al­legedly led by ex-​CFO Jan Mar­s­alek. Mar­s­alek him­self has been on the run since June 2020 and has not been charged.

The fur­ther pro­cessing of the Wir­e­card scan­dal is now the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the fourth crim­inal cham­ber of the Mu­nich I Re­gional Court, headed by presid­ing judge Markus Födisch. It will prob­ably be de­cided in the sum­mer whether the charges against Braun, von Erffa and Bel­len­haus will be ad­mit­ted. The trial is ex­pec­ted to be­gin in the fall. Braun and his co-​defendants face up to ten years in prison.

Lawsuit against auditors Ernst & Young

The law firm Schirp und Part­ner rep­res­ents nu­mer­ous plaintiffs in con­nec­tion with the Wir­e­card scan­dal. Join the class of plaintiffs against the aud­it­ors Ernst & Young here and claim your lost in­vest­ment in Wir­e­card AG as dam­ages. Fur­ther­more, you can still file your claims in the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings un­til April 2022. We will be happy to as­sist you with this as well. You can find all im­port­ant in­form­a­tion on the Wir­e­card scan­dal here.