The Wirecard criminal trial is not going well for former CEO Braun. And the Austrian manager is now confronted with massive accusations in a parallel civil lawsuit.
The former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun is now also coming under pressure in a civil case: For the first time, the legal advisor for the former Wirecard supervisory board Stefan Klestil publicly accused Braun, who has been in custody since summer 2020, of being a criminal. “We have a strong bond on the board,” said Klestil’s lawyer Stefan Freund at the oral hearing before the fifth civil chamber of the Munich I Regional Court.
“Two criminals on the board” – meaning Braun and sales director Jan Marsalek, who has been in hiding since 2020 – had stolen 35 million, said the lawyer about the flow of money in the months before the group collapse in the summer of 2020, which is also part of the indictment in the Wirecard criminal proceedings that are running at the same time. “The board members did what they wanted anyway.”
Braun’s lawyers, however, emphasized that Braun acted properly on the board. The liability lawsuit brought by the insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé against Braun, his former board colleagues, Klestil and the former Wirecard supervisory board chairman Wulf Mathias – the latter has already died – was heard in the Munich Palace of Justice. Jaffé wants to hold the managers personally liable for the immense losses and secure as many millions as possible for the creditors.
The insolvency administrator, who has been involved in securing Wirecard’s assets since the summer of 2020, also accuses Klestil of breaching his duties in monitoring the board of directors. Klestil personally used cautious language in his testimony in the criminal trial a few weeks ago and did not directly accuse Braun of being a member of a criminal gang – his lawyer now did that in the civil trial. The presiding judge Helmut Krenek did not indicate whether the chamber wanted to accept Jaffé’s liability claim in whole or in part.
Source: Stern
