A former chief accountant of the scandalous group that collapsed in 2020 testified in court as a witness.
In the Wirecard process, a former chief accountant of the scandalous group that collapsed in 2020 confirmed a central allegation of the prosecution – but with qualifications. The last “good” Wirecard consolidated financial statement was that of 2014, said the manager formerly responsible for the balance sheets of the Wirecard subsidiaries on Wednesday before the Munich I Regional Court.
After that, the preparation of the consolidated financial statements became more and more time-consuming and complex. The receivables from business partners and subsidiaries recorded in the Wirecard balance sheets were therefore offset by less and less actual income.
The accountant estimated that in the final phase before the Wirecard bankruptcy, only five to ten percent of these claims were actually settled. During his police interrogation, the manager had already testified that, in his estimation, the group lived on credit from the money from the lenders. He confirmed this in court: “That was my interpretation, yes.”
Accountant on the witness stand: “I believed in the numbers”
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the former CEO Markus Braun and two other former top managers of the group of having cheated the lending banks by three billion euros with the help of invented transactions.
In truth, according to the indictment, the Wirecard Group made high losses, so it was the loans that kept the loss-making group afloat – at least that is the view of the public prosecutor, which Braun vehemently denies. The accountant on the witness stand confirmed on the one hand that the group lived on credit, but on the other hand emphasized that he believed the deals were genuine: “I believed in the numbers,” he said. “I still have Wirecard shares to this day.”
Source: Stern
