Wirecard trial: Testimony of Markus Braun concluded

The first stage of the crim­inal trial against ex-​Wirecard CEO Markus Braun has now been completed.

Last week, the ques­tion­ing of the former CEO of Wir­e­card AG came to an end. On the last day of his testi­mony, Markus Braun once again em­phas­ized that he con­siders him­self in­no­cent. Ac­cord­ing to Braun, for ex­ample, there was “com­pel­ling evid­ence” that oth­ers were the real cul­prits and that they had al­legely de­frauded the former Dax com­pany of al­most 1.9 bil­lion euros.

In re­cent weeks, Markus Braun has tried to prove his in­no­cence on the basis of sev­eral present­a­tions, ac­count state­ments and other doc­u­ments. In his view, the evid­ence in his fa­vor was “over­whelm­ing”.

Braun, as well as Stephan von Erffa (former chief ac­count­ant of Wir­e­card AG) and Oliver Bel­len­haus (former com­pany rep­res­ent­at­ive in Dubai and key wit­ness for the pro­sec­u­tion), who are also on trial, are ac­cused of, among other things, pro­fes­sional gang fraud, breach of trust and mar­ket manipulation.

In the com­ing days of the trial, the tak­ing of evid­ence is to be­gin. At the be­gin­ning, po­lice of­ficers are to testify on the status of the investigation.

Investor model proceedings opened – model plaintiff appointed

The pro­ceed­ings in the Wir­e­card case are also slowly gain­ing mo­mentum at the civil law level. The Bav­arian Su­preme State Court re­spons­ible has now ap­poin­ted the model plaintiff in the Cap­ital In­vestor Model Pro­ceed­ings (KapMuG). This marks the start of re­gis­tra­tion for the moel proceedings.

In­jured in­vestors who have not yet filed a claim for dam­ages against EY can now re­gister for the KapMuG pro­ceed­ings within a period of six months (un­til Septem­ber 18, 2023).

In such pro­ceed­ings, all claims for dam­ages against EY in con­nec­tion with the Wir­e­card in­solv­ency are to be bundled. The Bav­arian Su­preme Court is re­spons­ible. Among other things, this court is now to ex­am­ine whether EY breached its du­ties when audit­ing Wirecard’s bal­ance sheets, which could give rise to claims for dam­ages by in­vestors and in­sti­tu­tional investors.

Should you wish to re­gister your claims for the model pro­ceed­ings in or­der to pre­vent the stat­ute of lim­it­a­tions, you can find fur­ther in­form­a­tion here.

(21. March 2023)