Key witness Bellenhaus attacks Wirecard boss Markus Braun’s defense

2023-10-25 15:46:43

The man in the gray suit can make all the difference in court. Oliver Bellenhaus is the prosecution’s key witness in the trial surrounding the billion-dollar fraud at Wirecard. He was “Wirecard’s rain maker,” i.e. the one who made money rain on the collapsed Munich payment service provider. This is how Bellenhaus introduced himself at the start of the trial in December last year, when he began his testimony and heavily incriminated co-defendant Markus Braun, once CEO of Wirecard.

This Wednesday, the 75th day of the trial in the Stadelheim correctional facility, he is initially on the defensive. For an hour he comments in detail on a number of allegations from the other side, who accused him of all sorts of “cover-up activities” before and after the collapse of the then DAX group in the summer of 2020. Braun’s defense attorneys accuse Bellenhaus of deleting or otherwise destroying large amounts of data, including 140,000 emails, countless chats on the Telegram messenger service and Wirecard business data.