Two more former Wirecard AG management board members were charged by Munich prosecutors over their alleged part in the payments company’s spectacular demise.
Former chief financial officer Alexander von Knoop and ex-board member Susanne Steidl were accused of breach of trust for their roles in approving loans and guarantees without proper scrutiny and almost no paperwork, the prosecutors said in a statement on Tuesday.
One credit of €40 million ($44 million), in December 2019, was rubber-stamped within half an hour based on an email containing a meaningless proposal, according to the charges. Another instance, in March 2020, concerned a loan of €100 million to a company that was already heavily indebted.
Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg
Wirecard crumbled in June 2020, admitting that more than $2 billion in cash it had previously reported as merely missing likely never existed. The company filed for insolvency a few days later hammering investors and destroying Germany’s efforts to breed a new technology champion rivaling Silicon Valley.
Von Knoop’s lawyers said that at no time did their client have the intention or even the idea of harming Wirecard and that the former manager was duped by others at the company. Von Knoop has been cooperating in the probe from an early stage and is confident the case will turn out well, they said.
A spokesman for Steidl didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
The new charges come as former chief executive officer Markus Braun has been standing trial over the scandal for almost two years in a Munich court alongside the payments’ company’s former head of accounting and another ex-manager.
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