In the Wirecard trial, a key witness for the attorney general’s office accused former CEO Marcus Braun of being a key figure in a billion-dollar fraud. But manager Oliver Bellenhouse, who worked for Wirecard in Dubai until the group’s collapse in 2020, said nothing concrete about Brown’s exact role in the network on Monday.
“Wirecard was a cancerBillenhaus, who was charged with Braun, said before the Munich Regional Court.There was an organized fraud system.“Brown Be A”Absolute CEO“It was – the central force at Wirecard.”Dr. Brown made sure we were all sailing in the same direction.“
Brown and Bellenhouse have been held for two and a half years. The third accused is the former chief accountant. “Little did I know I would go to sleep with rats and wake up with the plagueBellenhaus said of his involvement It is supposed to be the largest fraud case in Germany since 1945 the other defendants; A sentence President Markus Vodish reprimanded her afterwards.
Wirecard was a payment service provider that primarily processed credit card payments in retail and on the Internet. According to the indictment, Wirecard booked billions of euros in “third party” sales via the Dubai subsidiary of CardSystems Middle East operated by Bellenhouse. These third party partners are companies that process payments on behalf of Wirecard.
Then the Dax group collapsed in June 2020 because the 1.9 billion in third-party funds held in trust accounts in Southeast Asia could not be found.
A criminal gang of scammers
The Public Prosecution charges the three defendants and two other suspects with one Criminal scammers formed and with invented profits To deceive the lenders of the Dax group, which collapsed in 2020, by 3.1 billion euros.
The 49-year-old was the first of the three defendants to testify on the third day of the trial. He is also the only one who has admitted to the allegations:I fear for my life.Brown denies the allegations through his attorneys, which Bellenhouse has declared implausible.He sees himself as a victim, which is a familiar pattern.“
However, Bellenhouse’s statement did not disclose when the scams began and how the alleged gang was formed. Brown’s defense, in turn, accuses Bellenhouse of lacking credibility and misappropriation of millions of dollars in company funds.
“Little lies become big lies“Bellenhaus left the beginnings of the criminal business in rough form.”Small lies become big lies, and big lies are punished.However, he did report on a meeting in October 2019 that Brown attended, and thus was about how Wirecard managed to maintain a facade of invented deals in the face of special scrutiny of the books by accounting firm KPMG.
Brown accuses Bellenhouse
In order to convict Brown as a ringleader or even just a member, the district attorney’s office must convince the court that he controlled the fraud or was actively involved. The director has defense attorneys explain to him that the missing billions were indeed out there, but that Bellenhouse, among others, has set aside these colossal sums.
Bellenhaus flatly rejected this. According to Brown, the billions in the accounts of former business partners that Brown cited are at most a small fraction of Wirecard’s money.
Brown’s defense attorney is resisting the process
Brown’s defense attorney, Alfred Dierlam, wants the process stopped. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is accused of starting the investigation into the actual payment flows too late.
Parties involved in the proceedings will be inundated with new documents, the lawyer said – shortly before the process begins 44,000 PDF pages, and then another 11,000. The defense attorney said that “the investigations that the OTP has missed in two years of proceedings and are now being conducted in parallel with the ongoing main hearing is a bottomless pit.” Dirlam’s second allegation is that the Public Prosecution Office withheld key documents from the defence.
The Attorney General rejected the criticism. The investigation committee said, upon its request, that “the files of this indictment are complete.” The billions cited by Braun and Dierlamm in the accounts of former Wirecard business partners relate to transactions that are not part of the indictment and are therefore irrelevant to the proceedings. The Chamber has not yet decided on a request for comment.
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