No, thats not true. Its just the tag that you should not remove.
The text "powered by" which get normally printed useing that tag is removed by a plugin in the branding free version. Its the easiest way for us to seperate both vl versions, without having to use seperate core coding. The text then simply dont exist thanks to the plugin. Not on the site, not when viewing source code.
As for the image it was a mistake as stated. Simply remove it from wrapper.html, overwrite the image on ftp, write a new filename + path. How you like