Investigators accuse longtime CFO Burkhard Ley of, among other things, accounting falsification, market manipulation, fraud and breach of trust.
The Munich Public Prosecutor's Office has brought charges against another former Wirecard board member. Investigators accuse longtime CFO Burkhard Ley of, among other things, accounting falsification, market manipulation, fraud and breach of trust. As CFO – and later as a board consultant – Ley, along with former Wirecard chief Markus Braun, a native of Austria, and other top managers, manipulated large-scale sales and falsified deals with third-party clients in Asia, officials said. investigators on Thursday.
According to investigators, this should increase Wirecard's share price. At the same time, the manipulated annual financial statements served to raise money from banks. In total, the damage amounted to several hundred million euros.
Ley's lawyers called the accusations unfounded. The Public Prosecutor's Office has been trying since July 2020 to place Ley under suspicion of a gang that allegedly falsified deals, the defense lawyers explained. Ley left the company before the main events of the scandal occurred. He then received a “strategic consultancy contract” that “had nothing to do with Wirecard’s operational processes,” Ley’s lawyer Norbert Scharf told the Portal news agency. “Our client will continue to actively defend himself and demonstrate that he was not guilty of any wrongdoing.”
Responsible for Wirecard's finances for eleven years
Ley was responsible for Wirecard's finances from 2006 to 2017. According to the Public Ministry, he had been involved in fraud and market manipulation since 2015; After leaving the Wirecard board, he aided and abetted crimes through consultancy services. Since the collapse of the financial services provider in 2020, a team of several public prosecutors, together with a special police commission, has carried out extensive and complex investigations. With Ley's indictment, one aspect was concluded. “Investigations remain under high pressure at several other individual complexes and recently added lines of investigation,” prosecutors explained. Ley was temporarily in custody in the months after Wirecard's collapse and was released again in November 2020.
If the 12th Commercial Criminal Chamber of the Munich Regional Court accepts the charges, Ley would be the fourth former Wirecard manager to have to answer in court. However, the criminal chamber, which is conducting the ongoing trial against former Wirecard boss Markus Braun, is not responsible. As these judges, led by their president Markus Födisch, are fully occupied with the trial, Ley's case ended up in the 12th criminal chamber under the chairmanship of judge Bernhard Geismar.
Wirecard collapsed in June 2020 when it was discovered that €1.9 billion was missing from escrow accounts in Asia. Former advisor Jan Marsalek, who went into hiding, was in charge of Asian affairs. Former boss Braun and two other former managers are in prison for falsifying accounts and gang fraud. They are said to have invented billion-dollar deals with so-called third-party partners. Braun, on the other hand, claimed the money was there but was kept behind his back. (APA)