The criminal trial against Markus Braun, former head of the Wirecard Group, which collapsed in 2020, starts in Munich on Thursday. Two other former managers sit with him in the dock. A gigantic procedure is expected.
Illustration: Charlotte Eckstein / NZZ
The saga of German payment service provider Wirecard, which went bankrupt in 2020, is a succession of superlatives. A meteoric rise for fintech stock market star and DAX group was followed by a dramatic drop in insolvency. This was triggered by what is probably the biggest accounting forgery in post-war German history. On Thursday, as part of the legal process, the criminal trial against former CEO Markus Braun and two co-defendants begins in a high-security court at Munich’s Stadelheim correctional facility.