According to the key witness, the alleged billion-dollar fraud at the Wirecard scandal group should have started many years before 2015. According to the manager Oliver Bellenhaus, who worked in Dubai until the Wirecard collapse in 2020, the so-called third-party partner business (TPA) with payment service providers in the Middle East and Southeast Asia was largely invented from the start. “The data was never authentic,” said Bellenhaus on Wednesday before the Munich Regional Court. “There is no indication that Wirecard would have been profitable without the TPA business before 2015.”
The indictment only goes back to 2015 because the history is statute-barred. Wirecard allegedly booked fictional proceeds of almost two billion euros through the TPA partners, which were allegedly stored in trust accounts in Southeast Asia.
Bellenhaus accused former CEO Markus Braun of “gang leadership”. “We knew exactly what we were doing, we were all not stupid,” said Bellenhaus about the criminal business of the management of the former Dax group. The main decisions were made by Braun and Jan Marsalek, who has been in hiding since the summer of 2020. As evidence, Bellenhaus referred to chat logs, according to which Braun gave him instructions.
Bellenhaus also made serious allegations against the third accused, his former direct superior and Wirecard’s chief accountant. This was a “driver” of the fraud. “Both are sitting here now and saying: ‘My name is Hase, I don’t know anything,'” Bellenhaus accused his two co-defendants.
According to the indictment, the three managers, together with other accomplices, formed a gang who falsified Wirecard balance sheets and damaged lending banks by 3.1 billion euros. 100 days of negotiations are scheduled until 2024. Braun and the ex-chief accountant deny the allegations.
