2024-07-03 18:13:45
The co-defendant remained silent for 134 days of the trial, and now he wants to break his silence. He faces several years in prison.
After more than one and a half years, a milestone has been reached in the Munich Wirecard trial: The third defendant, Stephan von Erffa, who has remained silent since the trial began in December 2022, plans to testify for the first time on the charges on July 17. This date was announced by presiding judge Markus Födisch at the beginning of the 134th day of the trial.
The former chief accountant of the group, which collapsed in 2020, confirmed his personal details at the start of the trial, but otherwise did not say a word on the matter in the course of the mammoth proceedings so far. The IV Criminal Division of the Munich Regional Court under Födisch’s leadership has promised von Erffa a prison sentence of between six and eight years in return for a confession.
It is not yet clear whether the former chief accountant intends to admit or deny the charges in his statement. Von Erffa’s defense attorney Sabine Stetter wanted to make a statement later this morning.
The main charge against von Erffa, the former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun and the manager Oliver Bellenhaus, who worked for Wirecard in Dubai until 2020, is commercial gang fraud: The three, together with several accomplices, are said to have invented billions in sales in order to keep their actually loss-making company afloat.
In its indictment, the Munich public prosecutor’s office estimates the fraud damage at a good three billion euros. So far, the trial has been a case of one person’s word against another’s: Braun, the main defendant, who has been in custody for four years, denies all of the charges. Bellenhaus, on the other hand, has admitted to the majority of the charges.