VW’s CEO, Chairman Charged with Stock Market Manipulation

Volkswagen Group’s top leaders have been charged with stock manipulation for failing to alert investors about the company’s diesel emission cheating, Bloomberg News reports.

Prosecutors in Germany filed the indictment with the Braunschweig Regional Court against CEO Herbert Diess, Chairman Hans Dieter Poetesch and former CEO Martin Winterkorn. All three men insist they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

Diess, who joined VW two months before the scandal was revealed in September 2015, says he is innocent and will continue as CEO. Poetesch’s attorneys call the charges “implausible.” Winterkorn’s lawyer insists he had no knowledge of the cheating until it became publicly known.

Bloomberg notes that the charges are independent of an investor lawsuit in Germany that seeks some €9 billion ($9.9 billion) in damages related to the same allegations.

Poetesch, Winterkorn and former VW Group CEP Matthias Mueller also are the subject of a continuing investigation by prosecutors in Stuttgart about failing to notify investors about the diesel emission cheating.

Two other former VW-related executives—former Chief Financial Officer Holger Haerter and Wendelin Wiedeking, former CEO of Porsche Automobil Holding, which controls VW voting rights—were acquitted of stock manipulation regarding the scandal in 2016.