The key prosecution witness in the Wirecard trial has accused the company's former chief executive of being the decisive figure in years of billion-dollar fraud.
"Wirecard was a cancer," co-accused manager Oliver Bellenhaus told the Munich Regional Court on Monday. "There was a system of organized fraud."
Chief executive Markus Braun had been an "absolutist CEO," Bellenhaus told the court, and "if he said something, it was done."
The prosecution accuses the three defendants and others of forming a criminal fraud conspiracy and using fictitious profits to cheat people who lent to the company, which collapsed in 2020, out of €3.1 billion ($3.3 billion). Braun denies the allegations.
Braun and Bellenhaus have both been in pretrial detention for two and a half years, with a former Wirecard chief accountant the third defendant.
Bellenhaus said that Braun "sees himself as a victim, and that is a familiar pattern." Blind loyalty to Braun and former sales director Jan Marsalek, who has been on the run for two and a half years, made him break the law and landed him in jail, he said.
Braun's lawyer, Alfred Dierlamm, previously accused Bellenhaus of being untrustworthy as a state witness and of concealing the embezzlement of millions during the investigation. Dierlamm accused the public prosecutor's office of serious errors and omissions in the investigations and has asked the court to stop the proceedings. The court has not yet decided on the application.
