Former Wirecard CEO charged with fraud over firm's collapse

The former chief executive of failed German payments company Wirecard has been formally charged with fraud, breach of trust and accounting manipulation, prosecutors said on Monday.

Markus Braun and two other high-ranking executives were charged after a 21-month criminal investigation. The ex-CEO has been in custody since July 2020 and denies any wrongdoing.

The trio is accused of market manipulation, embezzlement and gang fraud on a commercial scale, prosecutors said. The indictment runs to 474 pages.

Once worth €24bn at its peak, Wirecard plunged into insolvency in June 2020 shortly after admitting that half of its operations and €1.9bn in corporate cash did not exist.

The sum, which made up a quarter of the firm’s balance sheet, was supposedly held to cover risks in trading carried out by third parties on Wirecard’s behalf and was meant to be sitting in trustee accounts at two Philippine banks.

But the Philippines’ central bank said the cash never entered its monetary system and both Asian banks, BDO and BPI, denied having a relationship with Wirecard.

“All the accused group members were acting in an industrial fashion in these six cases of fraud, because that is how they secured their own salaries, including partially profit-related portions,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Charged alongside Braun were former deputy finance director and head of accounting Stephan von Erffa. The other is a former Dubai-based manager in charge of a Wirecard subsidiary, who has turned chief witness and cannot be named for legal reasons. Jan Marsalek, who was chief operating officer, is on the run.