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Wir­e­card chief Markus Braun is ready to take the stand.

 ‘Braun is as cred­ible as Baron Münch­hausen,’ says a Ger­man law­maker, refer­ring to the 18th-cen­tury

Wirecard building

noble­man fam­ous for out­land­ish tales. Wir­e­card chief exec­ut­ive Markus Braun had barely man­aged to reas­sure share­hold­ers rattled by news of an internal fraud probe in 2019 when the law­yers lead­ing it all but called him a liar. The let­ter is one of the sev­eral examples of Braun being accused of mak­ing incor­rect, and mis­lead­ing state­ments to investors, an FT ana­lysis of Wir­e­card emails and other doc­u­ments reveals. The incid­ents raise fur­ther ques­tions about Braun’s cred­ib­il­ity, just as he is due to take the stand at the Munich trial examin­ing the com­pany’s fail­ure.

«A CEO who does not notice that his most import­ant cli­ents are not real may exist in fic­tion, but I am cer­tain that Braun was very aware of his com­pany’s situ­ation». So far, Braun has not made a state­ment in court. Instead, Braun has been implic­ated heav­ily by one of his co-defend­ants, the former Dubai-based exec­ut­ive Oliver Bel­len­haus.

With a lack of con­clus­ive evid­ence that Braun knew about or was dir­ectly involved in the alleged fraud, the trial, to an extent, hinges on which man the panel of five judges believes. Internal emails and other doc­u­ments reviewed by the FT sug­gest that fac­tual state­ments by Braun were not always truth­ful and were some­times chal­lenged by law­yers hired by the group and by its aud­it­ors and super­vis­ory board. After an FT story in Janu­ary 2019 repor­ted that a com­pli­ance probe by Rajah & Tann had found evid­ence indic­at­ing «ser­i­ous offences of for­gery and/ or of falsi­fic­a­tion of accounts», Braun told ana­lysts that the investigation had not found «any proof, or con­clus­ive find­ings, that any of these alleg­a­tions are true» and was not expec­ted to do so. The firm said it dis­agreed with Wir­e­card and Braun’s view that it «has not made, and is not expec­ted to make, any find­ings of mater­ial non-com­pli­ance as to the gov­ernance and account­ing prac­tices of any Wir­e­card sub­si­di­ary or employee».

Rajah & Tann said Braun and Wir­e­card’s pub­lic pos­i­tion «causes us con­cern» and urged the com­pany to stop mak­ing pub­lic state­ments about the invest­ig­a­tion «until after our final report has been issued». One year on, it was KPMG’s turn to tell Braun that his depic­tion of facts was not in line with real­ity.

www.sba.tax

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Comments

  1. Nigel8 February 2023 at 11:53

    The comparison with Baron Münchhausen si quite accurate I think. This man can't be trusted because it's in his interest to lie and spin the facts. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Samuel8 February 2023 at 13:10

      They won't get any good information out of him, that's for sure. But maybe he will make a mistake, who knows?

      Delete

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