Lawmakers Question Abrupt Exit of VW Compliance Chief

German lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the sudden departure of Volkswagen AG’s chief compliance officer last month, only a year after she was hired, Spiegel Online reports.

Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt, a highly respected judge, was hired away from Daimler AG, where she had been the management board member in charge of integrity and legal affairs since 2011. VW appointed her to the same role to help it reform after the company’s diesel emissions cheating scandal.

But in a letter to the prime minister of Lower Saxony, a group of 31 lawmakers fret that with Hohmann-Dennhardt’s abrupt exit, VW’s supervisory board members are “only insufficiently carrying out their ownership role and controlling task.”

Critics have doubted that VW, which has been tightly controlled by its founding Porsche and Piech families, can overcome a culture that allowed the cheating.

The Lower Saxony legislators also question a possible conflict of interest between Hohmann-Dennhardt, whose hiring coincided with VW’s appointment of Manfred Doss as head of legal affairs. Doss is head of compliance for Porsche SE, the holding company that controls VW.

Spiegel says the lawmakers want to further determine whether VW awarded Hohmann-Dennhardt what they consider an excessive pension of €8,000 ($8,500) per month and an exit compensation package worth between €12 million and €15 million.