Almost to the day three years after the collapse of the scandalous Wirecard group, according to insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé, there is still no trace of the 1.9 billion euros that have been missing since then. In a new status report, the lawyer contradicts the representation of the ex-CEO Markus Braun, who is on trial for alleged fraud in the billions. There is therefore no evidence that the money and the underlying transaction could have been real: “On the contrary, all further investigations have confirmed that this was not the case,” says the report, which is available to the German Press Agency .
The criminal proceedings against Braun and two other former Wirecard managers have been ongoing in Munich since December. The core of the indictment is the allegation that Braun and his accomplices invented transactions and sales worth billions in order to keep the Dax group, which is actually in the red, afloat and to swindle large bank loans.
Were the payments made up or real?
As part of the so-called TPA business, Wirecard partner companies in Asia are said to have processed credit card payments on behalf of the Bavarian group – according to the indictment invented, according to Braun real.
According to Braun, the profits are said to have been stolen or misappropriated by the real perpetrators. “It is unthinkable that a deal of the size that Wirecard specified would remain without a trace in the company’s data,” says Jaffé’s report.
The insolvency administrator puts the order of magnitude at a transaction volume of 51 billion euros in 2019. “If there had been a shadow TPA deal worth billions, it could not simply disappear.” According to his own words, the insolvency administrator has not found funds in the billions either.
