Markus Braun urged one of his top lieutenants at Wirecard, the collapsed payments firm, to retrospectively change internal accounting data, a panel of five judges at Munich Regional Court heard on Wednesday.
Oliver Bellenhaus, a former Wirecard executive who has turned chief witness for the prosecution in a trial examining one of Europe’s largest accounting scandals, has for the first time made specific allegations that Braun, chief executive at the time, was directly involved in the fraud.
The former German blue-chip collapsed in June 2020 after disclosing that half of its revenue and €1.9bn of cash did not exist. Braun, Bellenhaus and Wirecard’s former head of accounting Stephan von Erffa face charges of fraud, embezzlement, and market and accounting manipulation over the collapse.
Bellenhaus told the court that on “four to five occasions”, Braun personally asked him to alter quarterly financial reports relating to the outsourced operations in Asia that were at the centre of the fraud. On paper, these so-called third-party acquiring operations, which were overseen by Bellenhaus, were Wirecard’s most profitable business unit.
Braun’s lawyer Alfred Dierlamm has stated that his client was not involved in any criminal activity. He has argued that the TPA operations were real and has accused Wirecard’s fugitive second-in-command Jan Marsalek and Bellenhaus for having created a “shadow structure” to siphon off money that belonged to Wirecard.
Bellenhaus told the court on Wednesday that the TPA operations existed in his Excel files only, and that he and some colleagues fabricated contracts, client lists and transaction data with Braun’s knowledge.
While the CEO was not involved in the operational details, he was fully aware that the operations were a sham and sometimes demanded retrospective changes to internal accounting numbers, Bellenhaus said. In addition to personal requests for changes, Braun also asked for tweaks to numbers via Marsalek, von Erffa and others.
Bellenhaus said that the changes demanded by Braun resulted in frantic last-minute work because faking the required data was “an extremely complex process”. After Braun’s interventions, “I had to start all over again”, he said, adding that he was often working under extreme time pressure to meet accounting deadlines.
He also said that changes demanded by Braun often related to inflating business volumes for a past quarter or asking for fewer payments flagged as being linked to the porn industry and more to the travel and the airline sectors to placate auditors and investors.
Bellenhaus told the court that some of the changes demanded by Braun were unrealistic and implausible, adding that he discussed these concerns with von Erffa who shared them. “Two hours later, I got a phone call from [von Erffa], telling me that Markus [Braun] does want it that way. Hence we did it like this.”
The trial continues.