Emissions: Audi head a suspect

While the latest hacking target – a South Korean venue called Coinrail – is much smaller, the news triggered knee-jerk selling, according to Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda Corp in Singapore.

“This is ‘If it can happen to A, it can happen to B and it can happen to C’, then people panic because someone is selling,” Innes said.

The slump may have been exacerbated by low market liquidity during the weekend, Innes added.

Coinrail said in a statement on its website that some of the exchange’s digital currency appears to have been stolen by hackers, but it didn’t disclose how much.

The venue added that 70 percent of the cryptocurrencies it holds are being kept safely in a cold wallet, which isn’t connected to the internet and is less vulnerable to theft. Two-thirds of the stolen assets – identified as NPXS, NPER and ATX coins – have been frozen or collected. AUDI chief executive Rupert Stadler has been named as another suspect in the widening investigation into alleged emissions manipulation at the Volkswagen subsidiary, public prosecutors in Munich, Germany said. Stadler’s private residence was searched yesterday to procure evidence, along with the home of another new suspect, an Audi executive board member. Both are accused of fraud and “indirect false statement or omission”, according to the prosecutors. Prosecutors allege that Audi sold at least 210 000 diesel-engine cars fitted with cheat software in the US and Europe from 2009 onwards, and they have been investigating allegations of fraud and illegal product promotion for the past year. Lawyers raided two Audi sites at the start of February. – dpa FRANCE