WIRECARD TRIAL: MARSALEK LETTER CAUSES UPROAR

The ex-​Wirecard COO Jan Mar­s­alek, who has gone into hid­ing, has writ­ten a let­ter in the Wir­e­card crim­inal proceedings.

The ex­act con­tent and word­ing are as yet un­known. The eight-​page let­ter was writ­ten by Marsalek’s law­yer Frank Eck­stein on be­half of his cli­ent. The “Wirtschafts­woche” was the first to re­port. It is also not clear why the former CFO and board mem­ber of the scan­dal com­pany is speak­ing out now. Mar­s­alek had fled shortly after the col­lapse of the com­pany, his where­abouts are cur­rently unknown.

Ac­cord­ing to “Wirtschafts­woche”, the let­ter is primar­ily about the so-​called TPA busi­ness, the third-​party part­ner busi­ness, which ac­cord­ing to the pub­lic prosecutor’s of­fice and Wir­e­card AG’s in­solv­ency ad­min­is­trator should never have ex­is­ted. Mar­s­alek is said to con­tra­dict this. The TPA busi­ness had in­deed ex­is­ted and “large trans­ac­tion volumes” had been pro­cessed over “more than a decade”.

The prosecution’s key wit­ness, Oliver Bel­len­haus, is also likely to be at­tacked in the let­ter. The lat­ter was “un­trust­worthy” and had al­lowed him­self to be pres­sured into “con­tra­dict­ory statements”.

TURMOIL IN THE CRIMINAL TRIAL

Presid­ing Judge Markus Födisch pro­vi­sion­ally de­clined to have the let­ter read out in the crim­inal trial against Markus Braun and other de­fend­ants in the Wir­e­card crim­inal case. Ac­cord­ingly, Födisch said he saw little pos­sib­il­ity of in­tro­du­cing the let­ter into the court proceedings.

The de­fense at­tor­neys of Markus Braun, the former Wir­e­card CEO, pro­tested, as in their opin­ion the let­ter con­tained es­sen­tial in­form­a­tion to ex­on­er­ate Braun. As a res­ult, a fierce battle of words en­sued between the law­yers, the presid­ing judge and the pub­lic prosecutor.

The pro­ceed­ings were fi­nally con­tin­ued on Thursday, July 20, 2023. Judge Födisch made it clear in the pro­cess that there would be no quick de­cision on the read­ing of the let­ter. “We will calmly con­sider how to solve this pro­ced­ur­ally,” he is quoted as say­ing in the “Han­dels­blatt”.

It re­mains open why Mar­s­alek is so sud­denly send­ing out a sign of life and clearly tak­ing a stand in fa­vor of Braun.

All in­form­a­tion on the Wir­e­card scan­dal and our ac­tion against EY can be found here.