In the Wirecard trial in Munich, the prosecution’s key witness, Oliver Bellenhaus, told the court that the “third-party business” and the alleged billions in sales of the Dax group, which collapsed in 2020, were fictitious, he said. And yes, the former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun was actively involved. “We made that up, of course,” Bellenhaus said on the sixth day of the trial about the billion-dollar bookings in escrow accounts in Southeast Asia.
Asked explicitly by the judge whether the third-party business existed, Oliver Bellenhaus said, “I answer in no uncertain terms: no.” The payment service provider had filed for insolvency in the summer of 2020 because 1.9 billion euros allegedly booked in said escrow accounts could not be found. The “third-party partners” were companies that supposedly processed credit card payments on behalf of Wirecard in countries where the Bavarian group itself did not have a corresponding license.
The sole aim of the third-party business would have been to deceive the auditors. “The auditor needed something, and then the panic arose,” Bellenhaus said. “It was a huge mess, it was all chaos.” According to Bellenhaus, former COO Jan Marsalek, who had been in hiding since 2020, the chief accountant Stephan von Erffa, and himself were personally involved in falsifying bookings, contracts, minutes, and other documents.
According to Bellenhaus, the then-CEO Markus Braun is said to have personally defused the auditors’ requirements, who demanded insight into the group’s business documents.
