Volkswagen: Four VW managers are on trial
Excessive salaries and bonuses - four VW managers are on trial in Braunschweig for serious infidelity. Works council chief Bernd Osterloh said to have unjustly collected over three million euros. The case has been on the judiciary since 2016.The district court of Braunschweig has approved charges against three former and one current VW manager for allegedly excessive payment of works councils. The main proceedings for suspicion of unfaithfulness or unfaithfulness in particularly difficult cases have been opened, the court said.Employers and works councils have traditionally been closely linked at VW - in the opinion of law enforcement officers too narrow in the case of paying high employee representatives. The Braunschweig public prosecutor had therefore accused the managers. The accusation: infidelity, even in a particularly severe form, in connection with the alleged granting of excessive salaries and bonuses.
German Corporate Governance Code
"The indictment is directed against two former members of the Board of Management and a former and a current personnel manager of Volkswagen AG;" the court said. The accused are said to have approved excessive wages and bonuses to five members of the works council. As a result, the group lost more than five million euros between May 2011 and May 2016; the prosecutor said. Accordingly, the "unjustified remuneration" to works council chief Bernd Osterloh alone should have amounted to 3.125 million euros.Apparently only belonging to the works council was decisive for this, the investigators suspect. They also see a conflict with the German Stock Corporation Act and the "German Corporate Governance Code". In response to the initial suspicion and corresponding searches by tax investigators; Volkswagen initially capped the salaries of leading employee representatives at the end of 2017.
You might also be interested in: