According to a former company lawyer, the Wirecard board was not overly interested in compliance with the law and the clarification of allegations before the group collapsed in the summer of 2020. The compliance department was “too small” from the start, said its former head on Monday as a witness in the Munich Wirecard trial. Compliance departments monitor compliance with legal and code of conduct. According to witnesses, there were only four employees at Wirecard at the time of the insolvency.
After the publication of the first concrete false booking allegations against Wirecard by the London “Financial Times” in spring 2019, the board of directors did nothing to get to the bottom of the allegations, according to the impression of the 40-year-old witness: “My impression was that they were not actively involved substantive discussion and clarification,” said the lawyer. “But that everything should be kept as small as possible.”
Alleged fraud of billions
The former CEO Markus Braun, the former chief accountant of the group and the former Wirecard managing director in Dubai have been in court since the beginning of December for alleged fraud in the billions. As a criminal gang with numerous other accomplices, they are said to have invented a large part of Wirecard’s profits and cheated banks by over three billion euros.
Braun denies the accusation, the former Dubai manager has admitted all allegations as a key witness, the former chief accountant has remained silent so far. The majority of the Wirecard workforce, including the legal and compliance departments, obviously knew nothing about criminal transactions. The former compliance chief did not raise any specific individual allegations against the defendants.
In his own words, the lawyer harbored doubts about the track records of his former employer. “It wasn’t conclusive for me.” Apart from the sparse staffing, the compliance guards at Wirecard encountered another problem: According to the witness, the department was set up more pro forma. “My understanding was that this was to tick some formal checkboxes, but not mean a commitment to good behavior.”
