Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun and his lawyers need more time to examine the documents. His defense lawyer Alfred Dierlamm today announced a motion to suspend the fraud trial against Braun and two other ex-managers of the insolvent payment services provider. The background was “what was poured onto our table in terms of files,” he said on the second day of the trial at the beginning of his statement, which was scheduled to last about two hours.
The court must now decide on an application to suspend the proceedings. As Dierlamm said, Braun will not comment on the allegations against him for the time being – even if a stay of proceedings is rejected.
Markus Braun considers himself unable to testify at the moment. The 53-year-old Austrian has been in custody for almost two and a half years. According to the indictment, the Munich public prosecutor’s office considers Braun the head of a criminal gang that falsified the balance sheets of the former stock market darling over the years and invented fictitious transactions worth billions.
Braun denies the allegations and sees himself as a victim of managers around the fugitive former board member Jan Marsalek, who had siphoned off billions. Dierlamm said Braun has been more prejudged than any of his clients in the past 30 years since Wirecard collapsed in the summer of 2020. “The pre-conviction is unprecedented as it is formative for these proceedings.”
