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Did a former CEO and the former CFO of the Fulda company R+S instruct an accountant to manipulate balance sheets? During the trial, various witnesses gave contradictory statements in this regard.
Fulda – Actually, 53-year-old Andreas R., who was employed as an accountant at R+S between 2006 and 2020, had invoked the right to refuse to testify and did not want to testify. But the court rejected this because he could no longer be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations. With his statement, the trial continued after four years before the 6th Civil Chamber.
The R+S Group sued the former CEO Markus R. and the ex-CFO Matthias H. in 2022. The accusation: The R+S Group's balance sheets are said to have been deliberately manipulated. The two are also accused of inciting the accountant to manipulate the balance sheets.
Trial over suspected balance sheet falsification: Former R+S accountant breaks silence
The 53-year-old spoke about his work in the company. There were actually two evaluation files, one internal and one external. The external one was used for the annual financial statements. In 2017, the company ran into economic difficulties. At that time there was an emphatic announcement from the board that certain key figures should be achieved. For this purpose, he rated the company's key figures very highly, but wants to have kept within reasonable leeway.
He did not want to answer the judge's question as to whether, in his own opinion, these guidelines were sometimes exceeded. When asked by the court whether he had received instructions from the board at the time to manipulate the results, the witness could not remember. He also could no longer remember conversations from 2019 quoted in court in which he admitted manipulation to third parties.
However, the new board later put him under pressure to sign a memorial protocol, the content of which contradicts these statements. The fact that he allowed himself to be pressured into doing this still annoys him to this day. A few months later he resigned for health reasons.
Carsten R. (63), managing director of the investment company HASPA BGM, was then called to the witness stand. The new board of directors at R+S reported in September 2019 and reported discrepancies in the balance sheets. The accountant also opened up and admitted manipulation. The witness then summoned the ex-finance director to an appointment in Hamburg and confronted him with the allegations. In the course of this, he apologized and said he was very embarrassed that incorrect figures had been presented to HASPA.
“In my opinion, it is not possible that he did not notice this manipulation,” said Carsten R. The ex-finance director is said to have admitted to him that he knew about it, but was not involved in the manipulation himself. In the conversation, the ex-finance director stated that he had been put under pressure by the co-accused former CEO. The 63-year-old witness commissioned a report to assess the financial risks from the law firm Ebner and Stolz with the aim of saving the company.
The 61-year-old auditor and tax advisor Dr. Volker H. was called to the witness stand, who had prepared a report on the financial situation of R+S at the law firm RSM Ebner and Stolz. He was commissioned by the then board of directors of the R+S Group. The 61-year-old reported on a conversation he had personally with the accountant. He said that he had produced the numbers as requested. There was “no asking or begging”.
It was also clear that the accountant felt very uncomfortable. The witness also explained that although certain leeway was permitted in the assessment of balance sheets, the deviations in this case went well beyond the “limits of materiality”. According to him, the manipulations were cleverly concealed because they sometimes went back to the level of receipts.
After a hearing that lasted around seven hours, the court decided not to evaluate the witness statements. The hearing will continue on April 27 at 10 a.m.
