In June 2020 the payment processor Wirecard collapsed because 1.9 billion euros had supposedly never existed. Its former CEO Markus Braun has been on trial for it in Munich since December 2022. Only in November 2025, more than five years after Braun’s arrest, did the Koblenz Public Prosecutor General’s Office strike with “Operation Chargeback”: against a network alleged to have charged other people’s credit cards on a massive scale through shell companies. Among those indicted there is former Wirecard manager Brigitte Häuser-Axtner. Braun’s defense wanted to wait and see what Koblenz would bring to light about the business surrounding Wirecard. But first the Munich chamber didn’t want to wait for Koblenz, and then it didn’t want to hear anything at all.

Now, out of the blue, it turns out that Koblenz itself is supposedly not that far along either: the Koblenz Regional Court sent the indictment back and abruptly lifted all arrest warrants, perfectly timed at the end of October 2026. The mainstream Poltergeist outlets are spreading this news so eagerly that, as usual, the simplest facts get drowned out in the racket.



Act 1: No Waiting for Koblenz

On 8 October 2026 the 4th Criminal Chamber of Munich Regional Court I rejected the defense’s motion to suspend the trial of Markus Braun and his co-defendants, which has now been running for almost four years. A suspension would not have been a short break; it would have meant restarting the main trial from scratch. After 285 hearing days and six years of pre-trial detention for Braun, presiding judge Markus Födisch had not the slightest interest in that. His goal: closing arguments and sentencing demands still in November.

The defense wanted to wait for the Koblenz “Operation Chargeback” proceedings. At their center is Brigitte Häuser-Axtner, a former sales manager at Wirecard Asia and a longtime confidante of the fugitive Jan Marsalek. She was arrested in Singapore on 4 November 2025, extradited to Germany at the end of March 2026 and indicted in July 2026; she had been in custody ever since. In August, Koblenz senior public prosecutor Susanne Schüler testified at length in Munich about networks, load balancing, facade websites and overlapping personnel.

The chamber’s reasoning, passed along almost word for word by dpa and co., could hardly have been simpler: Häuser-Axtner had already been summoned in the spring and had refused to testify, so there was nothing to wait for. That the actual scope of the Koblenz investigation – indictment, data, Schüler’s testimony – only became tangible afterwards? Checked off, back in early October 2026 in Munich.

Act 2: Three Hours of Rejections

A good week later, on 14 October, came the big cleanup in the underground high-security courtroom at Stadelheim prison. For three hours the presiding judge read out why practically every one of the defense’s outstanding motions to take evidence was being rejected – some of them had been on the table for more than two years. The chamber saw no need for witnesses from the Austrian investigations of the SOKO AG Pharma task force, none for the files on Martin Weiss and Egisto Ott, and none for the British spy ring around Orlin Roussev. Nor was it interested in Marsalek’s telecommunications devices in Britain, which the British authorities refuse to hand over anyway, or in any intelligence communications relating to Marsalek. Investigating Marsalek’s further crimes, the chamber said, was simply not its job.

Particularly remarkable: claims that Marsalek worked for Russian intelligence were “completely unconfirmed” and based merely “on vague reports in various press articles.” Quite a transformation for a man who only a few years ago was paraded around the country as the ultimate Putin villain.

Act 3: The Credible Fugitive

On 28 October, by now in the new Palace of Justice on Dachauer Straße, a short morning was enough to clear away further important defense motions. There was no connection between Allied Wallet, the merchants and Wirecard, it was all speculation, and founder Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja had credibly denied all of it, the chamber said at first. Just a few pages later, the chamber itself found that Allied Wallet had been integrated through Wirecard Bank as a so-called payment facilitator. So the connection did exist after all – just not where anyone would have had to look for it, or for reality, for that matter.

And the credible witness? He was under house arrest in Lithuania, faces two indictments in the United States and is considered a fugitive there. In 2019 he and Allied Wallet reached a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over processing payments for scams that cost consumers more than $110 million. In 2021 an indictment followed in Boston, alleging that more than $150 million had been slipped past Visa and Mastercard. On top of that comes an indictment in Washington over illegal campaign contributions. And the juiciest part: the Boston indictment explicitly names Wirecard AG as one of the banks through which Allied Wallet processed payments. Precisely the connection Munich brushed aside as speculation.

And on it went, ever so diligently: according to the chamber, more than 1,000 emails relating to Oliver Bellenhaus and Allied Wallet cannot be found, which is why nobody should keep looking for them either. Why evidence surrounding crown witness Bellenhaus has been treated differently ever since the indictment was filed was, once again, not worth a single word to the chamber.

Act 4: Koblenz Pulls the Handbrake

And then, also on 28 October, the news from Koblenz: the 15th Criminal Chamber of the Koblenz Regional Court has sent the nearly 2,400-page “Operation Chargeback” indictment back to the Public Prosecutor General’s Office. It is demanding “substantial further investigations and data analyses”, because it has not been fully established whether the case involves computer fraud or ordinary fraud. For the time being, the chamber cannot find a strong suspicion for either offense. All nine arrest warrants were lifted, including the one against Häuser-Axtner. The trial, planned to begin in November, is now up in the air.

The Koblenz Public Prosecutor General’s Office is fighting back. It intends to appeal the lifting of the nine arrest warrants and “largely does not share” the Regional Court’s view. The further investigations demanded are contradictory and barely feasible, it says; otherwise the proceedings could possibly outlast the lifespans of everyone involved. After all, the case concerns allegedly more than 19 million fake subscriptions, over four million affected cardholders in 193 countries and estimated damages of more than 300 million euros. One rubs one’s eyes: a prosecuting authority declares that thorough fact-finding could outlive everyone involved. Munich is already one step ahead. There, the chamber has solved the problem elegantly by not investigating any further at all. Meanwhile Markus Braun’s lifetime has been ticking away behind the Stadelheim wall for more than six years.

A quick reminder: in November 2025 the Koblenz Public Prosecutor General’s Office was still announcing its suspicion “that the accused compromised four major German payment service providers in order to process payments.” In its press release on the indictment of August 2026 it went one better: it classified the offenses as “commercial, gang-based computer fraud,” committed in the orbit of a criminal organization aimed at the “infiltration of the German financial system and the creation of a shadow financial system.” Of all things, it is precisely this computer fraud that the Koblenz Regional Court now can’t even make out as a strong suspicion anymore.


After the latest announcement from Koblenz, the mainstream Poltergeist outlets promptly bobbed their heads like a row of nodding dogs on a parcel shelf, all in chorus: “U-turn,” “setback,” “Court picks indictment apart”. Overnight the news was chased through every channel, and the audience was invited to marvel. What was reliably missing were a few very simple facts.

First: in Germany, pre-trial detention is not a permanent state. It may only continue beyond six months if the Higher Regional Court allows it because of the particular difficulty or particular scope of the investigation. Some of the accused in the Koblenz case had already been in custody for around eleven months. A court that hands an indictment back for further investigation and pushes the start of the trial into the indefinite future simply cannot justify that detention any longer. Lifting the warrants is therefore less a surprising U-turn than a legal consequence.

Second: this is precisely the case Munich did not want to wait for. The defense asked for a postponement until Koblenz brought clarity; the chamber refused. Now Koblenz itself declares that the course of the alleged offenses in its own case has not yet been sufficiently investigated. The questions Munich didn’t want to wait on are therefore by no means answered – they are more open than ever.

Third: the yardstick. In Koblenz, around eleven months are enough to declare detention no longer proportionate. In Munich, Markus Braun has been in pre-trial detention for more than six years – in proceedings in which the Bavarian chamber shuts every door that might lead to real fact-finding.

Also remarkable is what Koblenz is relying on: “the latest findings from recently conducted interrogations.” Which interrogations those are, the court doesn’t say. And the whole flock of Poltergeists doesn’t ask either.

It does not take much imagination to wonder what is going on here. For years, Munich’s Wirecard prosecutors and investigators have circled the wagons around their version of events. Then Koblenz turns up, a full five years after the Wirecard collapse of mid-2020, with networks, data and the name Häuser-Axtner, all of it far too close to the public for Munich’s comfort. And now, after almost a year of custody and prosecution driven by Koblenz, not Munich, the Koblenz Regional Court suddenly finds that very indictment largely unfit for trial. The universe has a sense of humor: the Bavarian judicial comedy, in full swing for years, has now hit the fan and gone on a multi-state tour.

What Remains

Munich wants closing arguments in November and intends to build its verdict on the existing case file – without Koblenz, without Austria, without the British phones, without Allied Wallet and without a critical look at the crown witness. Meanwhile the Koblenz sister court of Munich’s Wirecard comedy-barn Regional Court announces, with great fanfare and fuss, that of all things the very proceedings meant to shed light on the networks around Wirecard are supposedly not yet ripe for trial – and declares the detention periods over while it’s at it.

Whether the Munich verdict will rest on a sufficiently broad factual foundation therefore remains, once again, wide open. The Bavarian chamber did not stop to consider that question. And the mainstream Poltergeist outlets will, as usual, shriek the Munich verdict into the world as the final word – no matter how many doors had to stay bolted shut with a loud bang to get there.

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