Wirecard Execs Play Blame Game as Fraud Trial Continues

The former boss of Wirecard is maintaining his innocence.

Ex-CEO Markus Braun, who headed the German payments firm, is in the midst of a fraud trial two years after the company’s insolvency and collapse.

Braun has denied any wrongdoing. On Monday (Dec. 12), his lawyers began their defense by attempting to shift the blame onto fellow defendant Oliver Bellenhaus, who was head of Wirecard’s Dubai operations and is now acting as the prosecution’s primary witness in the case against Braun.

Braun’s lawyer, Alfred Dierlamm, said that Bellenhause was the main perpetrator of the fraud and has asked for the trial to be suspended given the volume of files that the defense needs to work with and has only had access to since November.

“Bellenhaus is the main perpetrator of a gang whose sole aim was to siphon off and embezzle large sums of money from Wirecard AG’s wealth,” Dierlamm told the court.

A lawyer for the third defendant, Stephan von Erffa, has also attacked the credibility of Bellenhause as a witness.

As PYMNTS reported last week, there have been similarities between the Wirecard case and the mounting evidence of corporate mismanagement and potential wrongdoing at the highest levels of FTX.

Read more: Wirecard Trial Sets Up FTX Parallels and Enron Echoes

Since the crypto exchange’s collapse last month, more information has revealed a labyrinth of interconnected entities and complex ownership arrangements that hid all manner of wrongdoings.

Like Wirecard, FTX is accused of using fraudulent accounting to hide the misappropriation of customers’ funds.

If the FTX case ends in a Wirecard-like trial, similar questions over who was responsible for any criminal activities will arise.

Were the FTX scandal a Hollywood movie, Sam Bankman-Fried and his alleged co-conspirators would disappear into the night with a flash drive full of tumbled bitcoin. If that were the case, they could look to the infamous Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek for inspiration.

The disgraced FinTech’s one-time COO is reported to be living under the watchful eye of Russian authorities in Moscow, out of the reach of European law enforcement.

For all PYMNTS EMEA coverage, subscribe to the daily EMEA Newsletter.