Imagine: Right in the middle of the Wirecard courtroom, while a witness is feeding her toddler applesauce – a break that provided more entertainment than some Netflix thriller. The judge inquires whether the defense is still interested in pursuing an anonymous whistleblower who, years earlier, had sent important information via ProtonMail to the defendant von Erffa.

It's astonishing that Judge Födisch only now, on the 178th day of the trial in Munich's Stadelheim prison and just a few months before the apparent beginning of the end of this mammoth criminal proceeding, suddenly brings up this motion on his own initiative. A mutual legal assistance request to Switzerland, the headquarters of ProtonMail, as well as their email servers, could potentially clarify the whistleblower's identity. But the presiding Judge Markus Födisch now leans into the microphone, after months of inactivity regarding the motion, and remarks with a hint of derogatory sarcasm, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear:


Only a few listeners in the room chuckled briefly; the entire group of 4 to 5 criminal defense lawyers, after so many years of the trial, didn't even notice the gravity of this statement anymore and remained completely inactive. The judicial implication: ProtonMail had Russian roots earlier and is now "only" in Switzerland – a suggestion that makes the email service seem somewhat shady, implying a recent move from Putin's shadow into the light, perhaps? In the context of the Wirecard scandal, with the alleged Russian connections of the fugitive ex-manager Jan Marsalek, this hits particularly hard. Perfect timing for a judicial narrative bomb, so to speak, since Wirecard was long associated with the dark, sleazy porn business anyway.

Fact Check: ProtonMail – Purely Swiss, Without Russian Shadows

ProtonMail was founded in 2014 by CERN scientists in Geneva, with its headquarters and servers always in Switzerland – only more recently partially in Germany. In mid-December 2025, ProtonMail announced that it might relocate to Norway – not Russia - due to emerging "surveillance laws" in Switzerland. No Russia with ProtonMail, zero, nada, nyet, neither historically nor currently. The judge's statement? Factually incorrect; it suggests a Russian inspiration for anonymous tips to a defendant – a narrative that once again raises questions about massive bias on the part of the presiding judge.

Judge Födisch follows up: A mutual legal assistance request to Switzerland? Pointless! With ProtonMail, you "can't do much; there are surely no logins to be found in the anonymous ProtonMail account."  And since VPN was very likely involved, it's all over anyway. Sound familiar? Just like with the Swiss witnesses regarding Wirecard funds that flowed out before the insolvency. Switzerland as an eternal black box, uncrackable like a bank safe in Zurich.

Observation from the Courtroom: A Pattern That Spins Like a Carousel

The list of judicial faux pas related to Switzerland is already a bit longer. First, there was the matter with Monterosa Services AG: The defense wanted as early as March 2023 to question witnesses and seize documents because the Swiss company is alleged to have been significantly involved in diverting at least 340 million euros from Wirecard accounts to tax havens before the insolvency. Central to clarifying the flows, right? But no, rejected multiple times. Just like numerous motions for bias against the various judges, associate judges, and alternate judges in the criminal proceeding. Of course, Munich authorities also refuse searches of the offices in Switzerland – as if it were a coordinated silence party.

Not to forget the downplaying of witnesses: On April 4, 2025, the defense again asked when the actual live video interrogations of four to five Swiss individuals would occur, who had already confirmed in writing 340 million euros in Wirecard funds before the June 2020 insolvency – apparently involving Monterosa Services AG and the former Credit Suisse. The judge: "Tedious and of little value,"  citing bureaucratic hurdles like numerous cantonal requests for video interrogations, where in the Munich courtroom, quote, "no written notes are allowed anyway."

The eBay Laptop with Arabic Keyboard and the Swiss Authorities

And in the key witness interrogation? Oliver Bellenhaus, whom the high court gave years to answer a catalog of questions from von Erffa's defense that was submitted at the start of the trial nearly three years ago had the word. He revealed on October 8, 2025 in court that after the Wirecard crash on June 20, 2020, he didn't fly directly from Dubai to Germany but first jetted to Switzerland for a few days before turning himself in in Munich. There in Switzerland, in June 2020, the company MacBook of the soon-to-be Bavarian super key witness Oliver Bellenhaus was allegedly confiscated by local authorities.

To the judge's question five years later on October 8, 2025 in the Stadelheim courtroom, "and the data?" came Bellenhaus's curt reply: "No idea."  Bellenhaus's defense attorney quickly jumped in and said that the Swiss authorities, after a mutual legal assistance request at the time, had forwarded the MacBook's data to Munich completely without problems and without any particular obstacles back then. Whereupon the presiding judge in turn said he couldn't recall any "notes or documents regarding this" in his massive collection of Wirecard matters. The judge concluded by finding it all, quote, "pretty strange."

But that's not all: Bellenhaus also presented in the courtroom on October 8, 2025, an eBay sales listing through which his wife allegedly sold the aforementioned MacBook after the mysterious device was returned to Mrs. Bellenhaus by the Swiss authorities. The eBay sales listing on the courtroom projector showed a MacBook with an Arabic keyboard.

The pattern? The judge favors narratives, hurdles, and sarcasm over real relevance, affecting nearly all Switzerland-related points. Additional stories about entanglements of ex-Wirecard people as well as former BaFin employees like James Freis, Elisabeth Roegele, Felix Hufeld, plus Dan McCrum and Pav Gill – entangled via Acronis with Monterosa – all cry out for more insight.

Moreover, we finally know that Jan Marsalek was not the "Russian spy" as mass media apparatuses have been fooling the public for years: at the Financial Times, they finally had to admit that fugitive Marsalek worked for Russia's arch-enemy CIA circles after the Wirecard insolvency – while the former Wirecard COO had apparently already been in Russia for over a year.


Perhaps all of this is just the charm of a trial that has turned much more into a gigantic show spectacle than truth seeking for years now. Na zdorovye!

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