“Into the blue” approved
Investigators charge two more Wirecard board members
06.08.2024, 15:29
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In the Wirecard trial, two other board members are coming under the scrutiny of the Munich public prosecutor’s office. So far, the two have not appeared at all or only as witnesses to incriminate the missing Marsalek. However, the financial investigators want to bring them to court for breach of trust.
The Munich public prosecutor’s office has targeted two other board members of the insolvent payment processor Wirecard and brought charges against the former CFO Alexander von Knoop and Susanne Steidl, who was responsible for product development on the board, the court announced. Investigators accuse the two of breach of trust in several cases, and in the case of von Knoop also of aiding and abetting breach of trust. Von Knoop and Steidl are said to have approved loans and other payments to obscure business partners “out of the blue” without any detailed investigation on the Wirecard board, even though some of them were in arrears with the interest and the repayment of the loans was questionable.
“All of these acts of embezzlement caused Wirecard AG losses of several hundred million euros,” the public prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The 12th Commercial Criminal Division of the Munich Regional Court will decide whether the two will have to answer in court. Wirecard declared itself insolvent in June 2020 after alleged balances of over 1.9 billion euros in the Philippines turned out to be non-existent. The bankruptcy of the former DAX company is one of the biggest financial scandals in post-war German history.
Former CEO Markus Braun, the then deputy CFO Stephan von Erffa and Wirecard’s representative in Asia, Oliver Bellenhaus, are currently on trial in Munich for fraud and accounting fraud. According to the public prosecutor and insolvency administrator, the missing billions were completely fictitious. Bellenhaus has largely admitted the allegations, while Braun and von Erffa deny them.
Steidl and von Knoop blame Marsalek alone
Former board member Jan Marsalek, who was at the center of the machinations as the person responsible for the Asian business, left after the bankruptcy and is believed to be in Russia. At the end of 2023, the public prosecutor’s office brought charges against von Knoop’s predecessor Burkhard Ley. They accuse him of, among other things, falsifying accounts, market manipulation, fraud and breach of trust. Ley denies any complicity. In the case of von Knoop and Steidl, it is only a matter of breach of trust.
The law firm representing Steidl did not want to comment on the charges. As a witness in the trial against Braun, it had incriminated Marsalek. He had antagonized von Knoop by transferring the money in the alleged trust accounts from Singapore to the Philippines. It had no insight into the third-party business in Asia. Von Knoop could not be reached for comment. He has not yet appeared as a witness in the trial. He had testified before a parliamentary committee of inquiry that he had known nothing about criminal activities. Marsalek was the sole person responsible for this on the board.