Bernie Madoff, the financier who orchestrated the biggest financial fraud in US history, was sentenced within three months of his guilty plea. The trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, lasted about five months. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced within little more than a year after her delayed case started.
And then there is Markus Braun. The trial against the former chief executive of defunct German payments firm Wirecard has entered its fourth year.
In more than 260 sessions in court since December 2022, a panel of five judges in Munich questioned more than 220 witnesses and discussed thousands of documents, trying to get to the bottom of a complex fraud that to a large degree unfolded in Asia, involved suspects in dozens of countries and was made through a complex network of shell firms that are out of the reach of German law enforcers.
Braun has denied any wrongdoing, insisting he is the fraud’s victim rather than its mastermind. Delivering a verdict on that has been complicated by the absconding of Wirecard’s second-in-command, Jan Marsalek, to Russia shortly before the company’s collapse and the reported death of another person thought to be involved.
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The Wirecard case is extreme, but far from unique. Volkswagen’s emission rigging scandal resulted in a conviction of former Audi chief executive, Rupert Stadler, some eight years after the cheating was uncovered, and the trial lasted 2½ years.
Legal proceedings in the trial of former VW boss, Martin Winterkorn were also elongated, partly because of health issues and the process itself. Eventually, the trial was suspended in October 2024 when Winterkorn, who will turn 79 next month, was deemed too ill to stand trial. He has continued to deny the charges.
Not all of the issues can be blamed on the intricacies of the German legal system. But some features make it particularly vulnerable to long delays and procedural gridlock, often working in favour of defendants.
Werner Gröschel, a retired Frankfurt judge who oversaw many complex white-collar cases, warns this can undermine the rule of law. “Swift justice is good justice,” he says.
Former criminal prosecutor Anne Brorhilker, who led the investigation into some controversial share trades that have become known as the “cum-ex” tax fraud, argues that Germany’s legal system struggles to “effectively prosecute large-scale, complex or cross-border financial crime”.
Germany’s federal system is one issue as the country’s 16 states are in charge of police, criminal prosecutors and courts, hampering the sharing of expertise across the country. Moreover, different authorities – the police, tax investigators and customs officials – are all dealing with aspects of financial crime, leading to frictions and inefficiencies, says Brorhilker.
[ Wirecard docudrama has snappy script but only skims surface of real issuesOpens in new window ]
Procedural rules of Germany’s criminal code are another core issue. German criminal courts are obliged to fully investigate all relevant aspects of the alleged crime independently of the prosecution’s investigation – shortcuts are off-limits even if the defendant has confessed to the charges.
Moreover, the courts have to follow the “principle of immediacy”: the judges need to form their “own immediate impression of the case on the basis of the best possible evidence”, says Matthias Jahn, professor at Frankfurt University. “Everything documented in the case files – particularly witness statements – must, in principle, be introduced again during the main hearing,” he says.
That’s not just time-consuming but can create additional pitfalls as witnesses’ memories often falter over time.
Procedural errors also can later be cited in an appeal against a verdict. For instance, a landmark insider trading case against a former funds manager who pleaded guilty needed to be retried because a list of the individual trades was not read out or introduced otherwise in court.
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In the Wirecard case, Braun’s lawyers have filed motions to hear additional witnesses and to review documents and complex payment flows. At the same time, they have argued Braun needed to be released from police custody while the case was ongoing.
His lawyers claim that more than five years of detention without a verdict was disproportionate as he has to be considered innocent until found guilty.
So far, the appeals have been struck down by German courts. But the longer the trial continues, the harder it may become to justify Braun’s detention. The clock is ticking. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
