VW inquiry widens to add a top leader
THE investigation into emissions fraud at Volkswagen reached the very top of the company on Sunday after the carmaker said that the chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, is suspected by German prosecutors of violating securities laws.
Pötsch, the former chief financial officer at Volkswagen, is accused of failing to notify shareholders quickly enough of the financial risks of the diesel emissions cheating scandal, which has already led to a $15 billion settlement in the US and caused the stock price to plunge.
The disclosure that Pötsch is the subject of an investigation is likely to intensify criticism that Volks wagen remains in the hands of many of the longtime insiders who were in charge while the company was producing millions of cars that were deliberately designed to cheat on air-quality tests.
More than a year after the company was accused of wrongdoing, the scandal is still widening.
A confidant of the Porsche and Piëch families, who own a majority of Volkswagen’s voting shares, Pötsch was elevated to chairman of the supervisory board in October 2015. That was a few weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency accused the carmaker of manipulating engine software to conceal illegally high levels of nitrogen oxide emissions.
Pötsch had been the chief financial officer of Volkswagen since 2003 and a member of the company’s management board.
In a statement, Volkswagen said that its management board “duly fulfilled its disclosure obligation under German capital markets law”.
Volkswagen is a lso under invest igat ion in t he United States for orchest rat i ng a n elaborate cover-up starting in early 2014 after tests first cast doubt on what the company claimed were “clean diesel” cars.