CEO Braun’s Five-Hour, Wirecard Charge Sheet Will Be Read In Court

In a Munich court case that starts today and is expected to last for more than a year, the charge sheet against former Wirecard boss Marcus Braun and two other executives is 474 pages long and will take five hours to read out loud.

Wirecard was a rising blue chip star until it was found that its balance sheet had a huge €1.9 billion hole in it.

Braun, the former head of Wirecard, and two other board members, Burkhard Ley, the former head of finance, and Stephan von Erffa, the group’s head of accounting, have been in jail for the past two years, waiting for their day in court. Prosecutors say Braun and his partners stole more than €255 million from Wirecard, mostly by making fake loans and changing accounts to trick banks and other creditors.

Braun is accused of fraud, theft of company assets, accounting fraud, and manipulating the market. Prosecutors in Munich say that he signed off on false financial reports and that the company made money that didn’t exist.

Oliver Bellenhaus, the former head of Wirecard’s Dubai unit, told prosecutors about his role in the company’s collapse. This led to Braun’s arrest. Braun says he doesn’t know anything about the accounts being changed.

Former COO Jan Marsalek is still on Interpol’s Most Wanted list because he ran away when the house of cards he and Braun built fell down.