Wirecard Sacked, Season 1: Sixth episode, Marsalek's letter

An investigative podcast about the Wirecard scandal in Munich's Stadelheim court

Another episode of the 'Wirecard Sacked' podcast, this season 1 is about detailed insider accounts of the proceedings in Munich's Stadelheim prison courtroom that have been going on for well over a year.

This is the sixth episode about the Wirecard trial.

Contents:
Be prepared for this request for evidence (→ 00:49)
The Web and The Bridge (→ 01:42)
The sudden focus on Jan Marsalek (→ 03:22)
Who is Melanie Bergermann ? (→ 04:01)
The anti-linear presences of mass media journalists (→ 06:38)
The Marsalek letter distractions (→ 07:45)
The letter out of the blue (→ 09:03)
The redirected focus (→ 11:56)

Season 1, Episode 6

Wirecard Sacked - The Court Proceeding

00:00

Previous
Episode 5 - The IT

Next
Episode 7 - The Jailbreak


Transcript 

(Music) 

Wirecard Sacked, The Sun24 News Podcast, Season 1, Episode 6. 

Jörg: It's like this, when Dierlamm lowers his voice and becomes very quiet, you have to listen carefully. And then he said, Mr. Födisch, I need a day to present a motion for evidence. And then I thought, oha, because that's finally it. Company names kept coming up, but at that point I had nothing concrete. I prepared myself very intensively for it, I pointed out on Twitter, it was still called Twitter back then, I don't even know X, that people should please prepare for this motion for evidence. Then came the request for evidence. I have several very detailed transcripts from that day and I was flabbergasted. I have to say, I don't think I've seen a document as exciting for me as this motion for evidence since the first big Zatarra report. It was really amazing. It went on for pages and pages about payment transactions, very specific, from account to account anyway, Pittodrie here millions, there millions, Antigua elsewhere, money in abundance that was shifted back and forth. And company names that rang my bell, some of which I have 200 documents on certain companies in my database. It was just ringing. That was a whole chime that went off for me. 

Martin: I know that you started with the hashtag TheWeb at that point. The sum of these initial 340 million that were found via Pittodrie has now risen to just over two billion. 

Jörg: That was always the difficulty and investigative journalists from a completely neutral Bavarian broadcaster also did completely neutral research into it. But the question they asked was, we can't explain the money and we can't link it to Wirecard. But von Erfa gave the answer in his statement. He said that Wirecard has to strike a balance between this money should be ours. We should draw the money from it, but there must be no responsibility. He called it the bridge and actually you don't have to say TheWeb, but The Bridge. That is the most important issue at the moment, the bridge over the quay. And again, he said that clearly from Erfa and nobody wrote it. Because that is actually almost the explanation for why it is so difficult to associate this money directly with Wirecard. Incidentally, I let go of this saying immediately after the insolvency. I am sure that the cash exists. It's just not on Wirecard's balance sheet, it's in the hands of the dealer. And that is actually the core idea of the Braun defense. In other words, this brown defense has always had a core of delusion or a core that one could at least assume. I'm still stunned that nobody is looking at it. And as I said, von Erfa actually gave the answer with the term bridge. 

Martin: Looking back, you can say that instead of focusing on the governor of Dubai, Oliver Bellenhaus, at this point in time. Suddenly, out of the blue, around mid-23, fall 23 it really took off, the focus fell on Jan Marsalek, didn't it? I got the impression that the mass media bombardment started when Marsalek published this letter, didn't it? Or am I wrong? 

Jörg: Yes, so it was July 13, the request for evidence. The interesting thing was, I found it fascinating. The reaction of the media was basically zero in terms of content. I think Melanie Bergermann, who was there that day, even wrote one substantive article. 

Martin: Who is Melanie Bergermann? Melanie Bergermann. 

Jörg: Melanie Bergermann, Wirtschaftswoche. 

Martin: For people who are listening who don't know. 

Jörg: So very briefly, Melanie Bergermann wrote an article about Zatarra together with Christoph Schürmann in 2016, which was a slating of Zatarra, in which Melanie Bergermann and Christoph Schürmann ridiculed the people who questioned Wirecard's balance sheet. The article was also called House of Wirecard, which was also very funny, because McCrum already had that. So the clarification about Zatarra was supposed to come. Then they pretty much tore Zatarra apart, asked some interesting questions, mentioned E-Credit Plus, which played an even bigger role. So there were some exciting details. Some companies are pipe dreamers. They talked about the Süddeutsche Zeitung's criticism of the balance sheet and said, well, Wirecard's balance sheet isn't that complicated. It's not exactly a chip shop in Herne, but that you couldn't understand the balance sheet. In retrospect, that was a very funny article. Well, maybe Melanie Bergermann would have preferred not to, but it's part of the story. Later, Melanie Bergermann wrote a lot about Dubai on the critical side, especially together with Volker Terhaseborg. And Melanie Bergermann, together with Volker Terhaseborg, wrote the most successful, by far the most successful Wirecard book to date, still more successful than Dan McCrum. Almost everyone on the investigation committee had this book. And in retrospect, that is also the case, as it virtually determined the discussion. So it was the standard work on Wirecard. I made a small contribution to it. Exactly, and then there was process observation. And in the beginning there was Bergermann and Terhaseborg with the WiWo blog, which was actually very good, the WiWo blog. Wirtschaftswoche wrote a blog. They practically wrote everything down, or wrote some of it down, as I said. It was very exciting. But after the motion for evidence, I don't think Melanie Bergermann even wrote a summary of the trial day and has remained silent ever since. Absolutely silent. And Volker Terhaseborg was there a few more times, always on very surprising days. Sometimes, there were somehow always, there was always some kind of secret meeting. I don't know how critical you can be of that, Martin, you know, that the attendance rate was very erratic. 

Martin: Yes, antilinear I would say. So what's the word? So initially ballistic and then underperfoming, as the trial progresses, I would say. 

Jörg: Yes, but on certain days. We will also come to von Erfa. The expert opinion from von Erfa, that von Erfa is not completely crazy after all, was never the question. We'll come to that later. But there were some highlight days when the store was suddenly full again. Bergermann was then July and then Bergermann no longer commented on it. Volker Terhaseborg, the contact with him, which was very close in the run-up, there is no longer any contact between me and Wirtschaftswoche. Apparently we have nothing more to say to each other. Or I have a lot to say, but they have nothing more to say to me. I think Dierlamm's defense made a huge mistake in making this Marsalek letter so significant. Because it is significant for me, but it distracted from their own motions for evidence, which would not have needed this Marsalek letter at all. You have to look at the Marsalek letter, and especially this Marsalek letter. I think the Süddeutsche Zeitung published 11, 12, 13 articles on this Marsalek letter in three days. Marsalek came at very astonishing moments, often when something exciting was happening. For example, after the motions for evidence, although well, he introduced Dierlamm. But that was really amazing, the Marsalek letter. Who even read it? I don't know, I'd be interested to know. The best thing was really Klaus Ott in the Süddeutsche, who spoke in a commentary of the smear comedy, the defense. Where then seriously, Klaus Ott is the over-investigative related to Wirecard, so to speak, an adulation of this Klaus Ott. 

(Music) 

Martin: We're in the middle of 2023 now. Out of the blue, I remember, that Jan Marsalek from Moscow or Russia or wherever he is or on Mars suddenly writes a letter to the court in Stadelheim. Sent to the district court. And that was really in the middle of 2023, that's what happened. As if a year, half a year of Wirecard, court proceedings, the bombs that we had briefly highlighted in the previous episodes, they were blown away. And suddenly, of course, from now on, it was a really great, from my point of view too, you have to say, looking back, perhaps a bit of a distraction from what happened before. Suddenly the focus was Marsalek, Marsalek, Jan and the attacks started, right? So everyone was firing on this topic, it got heated. 

Jörg: Yes, Klaus Ott described a chapter of this Jan Marsalek letter later in a podcast and said, and then some confused stuff comes up. But this chapter contained crucial information and whoever wrote this letter, we can't say that it was actually written by Jan Marsalek. We can say that there is inside information about Wirecard in this letter, there is also information about the click formations in Wirecard. So it was at least one person close to Wirecard, it could well have been Jan Marsalek, in my opinion it is not clear. But the fact is that this letter, although Braun presents Jan Marsalek as one of the main perpetrators, absolutely confirms Braun's thesis in very decisive and also comprehensible points. And there is another exciting thing, I don't think there is an uncensored version of this letter anywhere, I don't even think the one in the Handelsblatt is uncensored, because it contains names. And there is one point in particular where I could imagine which name should be there and that is absolutely fascinating. 

Martin: I received the excerpts months later, after the whole world had reported on this, not from Marsalek's letter directly, but from the summary that this lawyer of Jan Marsalek's distributed. And I can confirm that this lawyer himself writes in his summary that, firstly, the TPA deal really did exist and, secondly, that he significantly incriminates Oliver Bellenhaus, the prosecution's key witness. And he does so by directly naming certain casinos, gambling, money laundering and going even further with the accusation, which Jan Marsalek would allegedly make in this letter, that Bellenhaus had demonstrably diverted funds from accounts. This is definitely a very exciting time, but as I said, it completely changed the focus. The court proceedings that took place there were more or less secondary or tertiary. Witnesses continued to be heard every week, including interesting and important ones. It went on towards the end of summer 2023 and into the fall, towards compliance. Many accountants, former accountants, were questioned. Accounting, people close to Mr. von Erffa, the former chief accountant, who was also on trial. There were a few interesting witness interviews, but they were completely ignored. All of a sudden, they were no longer a part of the public discussion. In the public debate, Wirecard was the accessory for the focus on Jan Marsalek and Austria. 

Jörg: Exactly, and what's even more exciting is that it's now virtually proven that Jan Marsalek and Markus Braun worked together. Because why else would Jan Marsalek have Markus Braun to entertain? That's also an allegation that Klaus Ott wrote, it's absolutely outrageous to write something like that in public. As I said, Klaus Ott and I will not become friends in this life. But I mean, I have considered making a complaint, a reprimand, to the German Press Council about Klaus Ott's comment, because that's not on. What happened there is beneath journalistic canon. And not the first and not the last time at Süddeutsche. We'll certainly talk about it again. 

Martin: Yes, unfortunately, from today's perspective, I would almost have to go so far as to assume that this Jan Marsalek story was propagated at the time so that the focus would increasingly fall back on Dr. Markus Braun. This ominous trial in London with the Bulgarians also took place during this time. 

Jörg: Oh yes! 

(Music)

Speaker:
Jörg - longtime Wirecard expert and investigator
Martin - Investigative lead at Sun24 News and Wirecard expert

Organization and realization:
Martin D. / Sun24 News

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