Berlin (AFP)

The former boss of Wirecard, awaited for first explanations on the resounding bankruptcy of this company, refused Thursday to answer the German deputies responsible for the hearing, reserving his statements for justice.

"I will not make any comments and I invoke my right to remain silent," Markus Braun told the parliamentary commission of inquiry, before which he appeared, in Berlin.

It is the first time that Mr. Braun, incarcerated in a prison in the south of Germany, spoke in public since the revelation, before the summer, of the gigantic fraud of which the persons in charge of Wirecard are accused.

In a short speech, he said he would speak "soon", before judicial investigators, on this scandal at 1.9 billion euros which splashes the regulatory bodies and German politicians.

"At no time did I notice, or have information indicating that the authorities (...) did not behave in a correct way", he simply added.

Dressed in his usual dark turtleneck à la Steve Job and his oval glasses, the 51-year-old Austrian then locked himself in silence and the hearing was quickly concluded.

The former star boss was all the more expected by the deputies as his partner, Jan Marsalek, former head of operations, has been on the run for months.

"Alongside Jan Marsalek, Markus Braun is probably the main person responsible for fraud at Wirecard which can clarify everything", had estimated Frank Schäffler, member of the liberal party and member of the Commission of inquiry.

- Advanced technology -

The meteoric rise of Wirecard, specialist in online payments, has long been credited to this charismatic boss who created it in 1999. The company was worth more on the stock market than Deutsche Bank when it made its triumphant entry in 2018. in the Dax index in Frankfurt.

Despite doubts relayed by analysts and the press on an opaque model, Mr. Braun convinces by praising the technological advance of his company on the niche carrier of dematerialized payments.

The sky was clouding in 2019, when the Financial Times (FT) published a series of articles accusing Wirecard of massive fraud in Asia or the Gulf.

Mr. Braun's counter-offensive to curb the creeping stock market hemorrhage will receive unexpected help from German financial supervisor Bafin, who will file a complaint against FT journalist Dan Mcrum, suspected of acting in concert with hedge funds.

But the fiasco looms when the audit firm KPMG reports the absence of essential documents, not provided by the company.

- Debt in billions -

After several postponements of the presentation of the 2019 accounts, the ax falls on June 18, 2020: the group admits that 1.9 billion euros in assets, or a quarter of the size of the balance sheet, do not actually exist.

The title will lose about 98% of its value as the public revelations on this scandal progress.

In debt for 3.2 billion euros, Wirecard was put into liquidation at the end of August.

The scandal turned into a spy novel when allegations about Jan Marsalek's links with various intelligence services circulated in the media.

Creditors, bankers and investors can only expect to recover a tiny part of the sum via a sale by group apartments.

The total number of claims, which includes those of shareholders, reached a record 12 billion euros.

The financial supervisory authority Bafin and the audit firm EY are criticized in this case, as the political world.

Members want to know if and when the federal government knew about the irregularities and if it did too little.

The committee would like to hear Chancellor Angela Merkel, who pleaded the Bavarian fintech cause before the Chinese authorities in September 2019, and the Minister of Finance, Olaf Scholz.

© 2020 AFP