MUNICH, Dec 19 (Reuters) – The important thing prosecution witness in Germany’s greatest post-war fraud trial admitted guilt on Monday in a rip-off that led to Wirecard’s collapse however stated the corporate was a “swindle” from the beginning, with former chief government Markus Braun at its core.
Wirecard’s downfall two years in the past shook the German enterprise institution, placing politicians who had backed it below intense scrutiny, together with regulators that took years to research allegations in opposition to the funds firm.
Oliver Bellenhaus, who was head of Wirecard’s subsidiary in Dubai, turned a key witness within the case after turning himself in to German authorities in 2020.
Bellenhaus is on trial together with former CEO Braun, who denies wrongdoing and accuses others of operating a shadow operation with out his data, and one different high-ranking supervisor of the defunct blue-chip firm.
They face expenses together with fraud and market manipulation and might be jailed for as much as 15 years if convicted.
Florian Eder, a lawyer for Bellenhaus, informed Reuters that the cooperation of his shopper ought to lead to a “very important discount” in his sentence. Bellenhaus has been in custody for shut to 2 years.
Initially of the trial this month, prosecutors accused the defendants of being a part of a gang that invented huge sums of phantom income via bogus transactions with associate corporations to mislead collectors and buyers.
Prosecutors stated the deception allowed managers to siphon cash out of Wirecard for years.
“Small lies turned huge lies … It was a swindle from the start,” Bellenhaus informed the court docket, saying he deeply regretted his involvement and the injury it brought on.
In testimony final week, Braun’s legal professionals alleged that Bellenhaus was the primary perpetrator of the fraud at Wirecard, which started processing funds for pornography and on-line playing and rose to be a DAX firm price $28 billion.
However Bellenhaus informed the court docket on Monday it was “blind loyalty” to Braun, whom he described as an “absolutist CEO”, that had landed him in court docket in Munich.
“Braun gave the marching orders and everybody adopted,” he stated.
In his 95-page assertion, Bellenhaus described how accounts have been fudged and revenues fabricated.
At one level, employees rented house in a Dubai lodge, the place they generated faux transactions for an audit, he stated, including that the distant location was to chosen to cover from journalists and for its proximity to a shopping center for meals.
Based in 1999 and based mostly within the Munich suburb of Aschheim, Wirecard turned a showpiece for a brand new sort of German tech firm that would compete with the established titans of Europe’s largest economic system.
However after efficiently lobbying German authorities to research those that have been scrutinising its funds, Wirecard was finally compelled to confess in June 2020 that 1.9 billion euros have been lacking from its steadiness sheet.
A verdict will not be anticipated till 2024 on the earliest.
(This story has been corrected to alter the size of the Bellenhaus assertion to 95 pages, not 100 pages)
Reporting by Christina Amann
Extra reporting by Marta Orosz
Writing by Tom Sims
Enhancing by Alexander Smith and David Goodman
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