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northAfter an hour it was 83 to three in the 2600 session room of the Paul Löbe House of the German Bundestag. Former Wirecard boss Markus Braun relied on his right to refuse to testify on 83 questions from investigative committee members.
He only answered three questions: Braun, as always in a dark turtleneck, gave his date of birth (November 5, 1969), his previous employer (KPMG Consulting) and question 86, that is, would you like to read his opening statement again. He took back the two A4 sheets and reread each sentence, as slowly and thoroughly as an hour before.
In it, Braun not only made it clear from the outset that he would not comment on the statement, because he first wanted to explain the matter personally to the Munich prosecutor I. He cannot and does not want to anticipate this before the committee. However, he does not rule out that, after the declaration to the Prosecutor’s Office, he may add his information to the commission.
He doesn’t see any unfair behavior, says Braun
I just wanted to make a summary comment from your very personal point of view: “at no time had I made any statements or received indications that the authorities, control bodies or politicians had behaved incorrectly, in breach of duty or of any other unfair way. “
But not only in government agencies like the financial supervisory authority BaFin, he does not see any unfair behavior, the supervisory board of the former Dax group and the auditors were “apparently massively misled” in the course of their audit.
Going forward, committee members should see it as an attempt to make Wirecard and himself victims of fraud, not just employees, shareholders and business partners. “He exonerated everyone who might say anything against him,” said FDP politician Florian Toncar, and followed the one-author thesis that former Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek had made it all up.
From the prosecution’s point of view, Braun is also one of the main culprits in the fraud scandal in which Wirecard is said to have logged billions in fake transactions over years. She accuses him and other Wirecard managers of commercial gang fraud, account falsification and market manipulation.
The prosecutor sees Braun as a “supervisory and steering authority” within the Wirecard network. The strict hierarchical system at the payment processor was characterized by a corps spirit of military comrades and oaths of allegiance between them. “Braun gave strategic instructions and specific business actions,” he says in an email from chief prosecutor Hildegard Bäumler-Hösl to members of the investigation committee.
The committee wants to find out whether the payment service provider, as a rising star on the stock market, was handled too carefully by supervisory authorities despite signs of wrongdoing.
Braun-shaped wirecard for 18 years. As a service provider for cashless payments at checkout and online, the company sat at the interface between merchants and credit card companies in a highly competitive market. The business informatics graduate likes to portray himself to the public as a tech nerd in his rare appearances, who is primarily concerned with how humanity will pay in the future.
His central message, which repeatedly sparked the imaginations of stock market analysts and shareholders, large and small, was: The world of payments of the future is only at the beginning of impressive development, and with it your company.
Wirecard’s growth over the next ten years will overshadow that of the last ten years. After discovering a hole in the balance sheet of 1.9 billion euros, Braun resigned in June.
Billions in damages for investors and banks
Wirecard is said to have been calculated for years with systematic air bookings and thus inflicted billions in damage to investors and banks. Munich prosecutors assume that fictitious profits have been reported since 2015.
According to his calculations, only banks and investors lost more than three billion euros. Also, there are many shareholders who lost money after the price drop. According to the bankruptcy administrator, a good 11,500 creditors registered claims worth 12.4 billion euros after bankruptcy.
Braun was the first witness in the taking of evidence of the 3rd commission of inquiry established in October for this legislative period. The rules are similar to those of the court: deliberately false information can result in a prison sentence of up to five years. However, witnesses do not have to incriminate themselves before the commission of inquiry.
Furthermore, there is the mosaic theory in jurisprudence, according to which individual responses may not be criminally relevant on their own, but as part of a mosaic-shaped construction of evidence may contribute to a burden for the individual. witness.
It was precisely a “mosaic-like overall structure,” as he put it, that Braun referred to before the committee. Even if the questions weren’t about the missing 1.9 billion euros, his fleeting ex-board colleague Marsalek or possible connections to the secret services, but more generally about whether he had a daughter or what was the title of his doctoral thesis, the answer Braun’s was: “I mean my statement.” That was his standard answer, with minor variations to say the least.
The question of a fine is difficult
Parliamentarians no longer expected any useful contributions from Braun, the processing of the list of questions served to prepare for further legal disputes, that is, on the question of whether Braun could refuse to testify in this way.
“We will review everything legally,” said committee chair Kay Gottschalk (AfD). You just won’t be satisfied with it. However, the question of a fine is difficult.
There were legal disputes between the Bundestag and Braun beforehand. His lawyers had requested that the former manager, who was detained in Augsburg, be questioned by video.
In a letter Monday, Braun is said to have vowed not to speak about criminally relevant issues when a video link was posted, but about his political contacts. This included a meeting with Secretary of State Jörg Kukies from the Ministry of Finance on November 5, 2019, when there were already specific allegations against Wirecard and a special report was commissioned.
Parliamentarians also had questions about the discussions with the supervisory authorities and at the Foreign Ministry. After the Federal Court of Justice requested a personal appearance in Berlin, it was evident that Braun had lost the will to speak.
The auditor representatives are then required to testify during the next week. They will then appear as expert witnesses from the companies Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG.
