Emmanuel Thomas, with DPA I Thursday, April 13, 2023
MUNICH – In the ongoing Wirecard trial continued today in Germany with the court told that former boss of Wirecard, Markus Braun did not only pressurize but threatened KPMG auditors working on the company’s records to overlook things.
Sven-Olaf Leitz, a board member of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firm KPMG, testified in the billion-dollar fraud case at the Munich Regional Court.
The payment service provider Wirecard collapsed in 2020 after the management board admitted that €1.9 billion ($2.09 billion) allegedly booked in escrow accounts could not be found. Braun is now on trial for fraud. He denies the charges.
Leitz recounted how, when KPMG had not been able to locate the money, Braun allegedly told him: “Trust me, it’s all there. I have the ruling power.”
This was the moment all the alarm bells went off for him, Leitz said. Wirecard’s head of sales Jan Marsalek had apparently also tried to divert auditors with the strange question: “Who else should have the money? Kim Jong Il, perhaps?”
KPMG had been tasked in October 2019 to examine the firm’s balance sheets from 2016 to 2018 and clarify whether the Financial Times’ allegations of manipulation were justified.
“There were several attempts to influence us,” Leitz said. In April 2020, he added, KPMG “lost confidence in further cooperation and said it no longer made sense to continue here.”
Braun threatened legal action and made attempts to delete or change passages in the final audit, which confirmed the missing money, said Leitz.
The Wirecard case, which rocked the financial world, has been widely reported on in Germany.
