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Former Wirecard boss Markus Braun was pressured to let go of his high defence lawyer due to lack of funds, in a significant setback for the businessman accused of orchestrating Germany’s largest company fraud.
Alfred Dierlamm, certainly one of Germany’s most distinguished white-collar crime legal professionals, walked away from the high-profile mandate final month after the funds of Braun’s administrators and officers insurance coverage ran out and the previous Wirecard chief was unable to pay him instantly.
The Wiesbaden-based lawyer, who represented Braun earlier than Wirecard’s collapse in 2020, stated he knowledgeable the courtroom in late Could about his resignation. In a letter to the courtroom seen by the Monetary Occasions, he harassed that the choice was solely triggered by “monetary issues”.
Braun, who has been in custody since July 2020, not too long ago misplaced a sequence of civil lawsuits towards his D&O insurance coverage when the latter refused to pay after an preliminary tranche was launched.
Wirecard, which at its peak was valued at €24bn, filed for insolvency in June 2020 after disclosing that half of its income and €1.9bn in company money didn’t exist. Braun has been charged with fraud, breach of belief, account rigging and market manipulation. If discovered responsible, he may very well be sentenced to as much as 15 years in jail. He has denied wrongdoing.
Whereas Braun had been a billionaire throughout Wirecard’s heyday, most of his fortune was tied up in now-worthless shares of the fee firm. His remaining wealth has been seized by the courtroom on the behest of Wirecard’s administrator and his household workplace, which managed his belongings, filed for insolvency earlier this 12 months.
The trial towards Braun and two different former Wirecard managers started in December 2022 and is predicted to run properly into subsequent 12 months. It’ll proceed regardless of Dierlamm’s departure, because the courtroom appointed a government-paid lawyer who will stay in cost and be backed by two further state-funded legal professionals.
For the reason that collapse of Wirecard, Dierlamm and his authorized staff had immersed themselves within the complicated accounting scandal, digging via a plethora of paperwork and fee flows between Wirecard subsidiaries and exterior accomplice corporations.
They accused Munich prosecutors of not correctly investigating the case, ignoring key proof and counting on a problematic chief witness. Dierlamm tried to show that Wirecard funds had been siphoned off by the corporate’s second-in-command Jan Marsalek and others with out Braun’s information.
Nonetheless, in the course of the trial Markus Födisch, the choose presiding over the case, has challenged these arguments repeatedly. Earlier this 12 months he launched former Wirecard supervisor Oliver Bellenhaus, who has turned chief witness, from custody, in a transfer seen as an indication of confidence in his testimony that closely implicated Braun.
Braun may come beneath extra stress if the third defendant, Wirecard’s former head of accounting Stephan von Erffa, breaks his silence. His legal professionals have upheld related arguments as Dierlamm. However Födisch indicated {that a} multiyear jail time period may very well be decreased if von Erffa determined to come back clear. Erffa’s legal professionals are in talks with the courtroom a couple of deal.
Die Zeit first reported Dierlamm’s resignation.
