Dr. Rainer Thiede mopped his brow. His fingers drummed a nervous rhythm on the witness stand. "Um... I wasn't across that!"  the KPMG partner stammered for the third time in ten minutes. Presiding Judge Födisch fixed him with a stare. "Dr. Thiede, you cannot be serious. This is about a multi-billion euro fraud."  The courtroom held its breath. What unfolded that day was more than a witness examination — it was an autopsy of an audit disaster.

"Can't Recall": The Mantle of Forgetfulness

On crucial points, Thiede's answer was some variation of "don't remember,"  "no recollection,"  or "wasn't across that"  nearly thirty times. Who were the key contacts for the shady third-party deals? "Marsalek, Bellenhaus, a Ms. Schneider... um... very few documents."  What about the merchant contracts vital for tracing the money? "Could be... um... I wasn't involved!"  Board meeting minutes? "There should have been some, obviously,"  he conceded, unable to explain why Wirecard kept them under lock and key.

Thiede, the man who once headed the investigation into Wirecard's phantom transactions, looked like a man haunted by his own past. The rough tally from the day's testimony was damning for a scandal that shook Germany just five years ago:

27 x "No recollection"
12 x "Um... wasn't across that"
9 x "Don't remember anymore"
1 x Stony silence to the judge's question: "Did you actually prepare for your testimony today?"

The evasion began to look like a strategy. "Who controlled the payments? Who was responsible?"  pressed the judge. Thiede (feet tapping lightly): "Various people... Marsalek, Bellenhaus, Ms. Schneider... um... documentation was scarce."  The judge projected contracts onto the screen. "Look! Mismatched signatures, different versions! Why?"  Thiede: "We had a lot of question marks... um... I wasn't really into it!"

A key moment: The judge projects an internal Wirecard “System Structure” graphic from November 21, 2019, onto the court projector. It showed Wirecard as a direct service provider between merchants and payment service providers, a widely misleading interpretation. According to Wirecard's own description, their part in the TPA business only included the trust accounts. Thiede's response: “I have no recollection of that.”  When asked why EY used a different representation than KPMG for this chart, the witness replied, “I don't know that either.”

Phantom Merchants and Hijacked Mail

The probe into 34 merchants of Wirecard's Al Alam subsidiary found, in Thiede's words, "no actual business being conducted at all." Some were already dissolved shell companies from Tokyo to Moscow to Los Angeles. "Exactly!"  Thiede agreed. He conveniently forgot to add that his team and also the prosecutors never truly dug into who was behind these phantom firms — the very entities long flagged by the Financial Times as proof of the fraud. A point the defense teams have hammered for years, accusing the Munich court of bias and the prosecution of incompetence. A claim met with court room shriekings and open derision from the judge's bench as well as from the Bavarian state prosecution.

Then came the trustee bank confirmations in Manila. Thiede had been told — with little scepticism — in December 2019 that the trustee was switching from Singapore to the Philippines. "Yes, I did find that switch a bit odd,"  he offered. KPMG had to send balance requests via its own secure network because, he claimed, confirmations sent by regular registered mail were "intercepted." How did he know they were intercepted? "Was it written on the receipt?"  later scoffed suspect Oliver Bellenhaus. "The bank in Manila [Ed.: OCBC Bank, a major Asian institution rated highly reliable by Moody's] confirmed to us: nothing exists,"  Thiede stated.

When Wirecard belatedly coughed up merchant lists at the end of April 2020, KPMG ignored them — the report was done, the company's collapse kind of in slow motion already. Did KPMG wait just long enough for the money trail to vanish into the new Manila trustee structure, making €2 billion untraceable?

That Wirecard CEO Dr. Markus Braun eventually lost his temper has been consistently held against him for years. That he is also partly legally responsible for the company's growth is treated as virtually demonic within the entire Munich judiciary. The evidence against Braun: an alleged threat of the "electric chair" against a KPMG employee and the demand for "capital market-friendly reporting" of KPMG's findings. It is repeatedly elaborated on how, according to a protocol from March 11, 2020, Braun claimed "absolute master knowledge"  over the TPA business, although this actually lay with Marsalek, Bellenhaus, and others. Braun is further said to have threatened KPMG manager Alexander Leitz: "I hold the lever to his chair,"  before later inviting KPMG employee Leitz to Dr. Braun's ski hut. Thiede confirmed: "That was not viewed favorably!"  Nevertheless, he conceded that on April 17, 2020, Wirecard supplied a list of important "comments on the KPMG report draft" — extensions to the KPMG report where it was clearly not fully coherent and irrefutable.

The Ad-Hoc Announcement, The Great Silence, and The Unraveling

The breaking point, according to Thiede, came on April 22, 2020. Despite the audit being obstructed, Wirecard's supervisory board — not the management team — released an ad-hoc statement, claiming KPMG had "original, genuine digital TPA data"  proving the transactions. Thiede admitted KPMG stayed silent, though their contract allowed public correction of "misleading"  board statements. His defence: "It is not our job to contradict ad-hoc announcements."

The witness's own final verdict was devastating: "We could not trace the transactions. Decisive evidence — bank confirmations, complete data — never materialized." When the judge asked if Thiede had prepared at all for his testimony today in court, the courtroom fell silent.


The memory lapses of the KPMG partner became the perfect symbol for the audit debacle that either enabled the Wirecard scandal — or was an essential part of it.