The fraud gang is said to have carried out a large part of its criminal business – whether real or imagined – in Southeast Asia. The video interrogation of a witness in Bangkok does not shed any light on the matter.
In the Wirecard trial, the central question remains a mystery as to which perpetrators got how much money onto the site or fabricated it: Today, the Munich judges heard a witness in Thailand via video transmission for the first time in the trial, which has been going on for over 13 months.
The name of 32-year-old Jongkolnee Rothab appears in Wirecard documents and on bank statements. But the saleswoman stated that she didn’t know Wirecard, nor did she know ex-Wirecard boss Markus Braun, his two co-defendants, other former Wirecard employees or anyone from Germany at all.
“That’s not my signature,” the young woman said several times – according to the interpreter – about the documents presented. According to the documents, she was formerly the director of a company to which Wirecard funds may have flowed.
She also answered “No” when asked by presiding judge Markus Födisch whether she had ever been a director of any company.
The 32-year-old sat in a conference room at the Thai Attorney General’s Office in Bangkok and her statement was broadcast on a screen in the Munich courtroom.
Mutual debts
In the trial, Braun and Bellenhaus accuse each other: According to Bellenhaus, Braun was a key member of the Wirecard fraud gang. According to Braun, Bellenhaus, the sales director Jan Marsalek, who went into hiding, and their accomplices were the real perpetrators, who embezzled huge sums of company money without the knowledge of the CEO.
Braun’s defense attorney Alfred Dierlamm then accused Bellenhaus of using “straw women” to cover up his activities: “I believe that the witness Rothab was included in the documents as a result of a total falsification.”
In the largest fraud case in German post-war history, Braun, Bellenhaus and the company’s former chief accountant are charged on suspicion of commercial gang fraud. According to the indictment, they have falsified Wirecard’s balance sheets since 2015 and damaged lending banks by 3.1 billion euros. Next week, the chamber plans to interview a manager from Southeast Asia in person for the first time.
Source: Stern
