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EADS finance director questioned in insider trading probe

The financial director of European aerospace giant EADS, Hans-Peter Ring, has been questioned as a witness in connection with a French probe into alleged insider trading in the group's shares, a German press report said Monday.

Published: 14 July 2008 16:33 CEST

Ring told the Financial Times Deutschland he was not a suspect in an affair that has focused on more than a dozen current and former executives of the European Aeronautic Defence Space Company.

They are suspected of having sold EADS stock before problems emerged with the Airbus A380 super jumbo jet in June 2006. Reports of delivery delays caused shares in EADS, the Airbus parent, to plunge on the stock market.

Ring was questioned two or three weeks ago, the newspaper said.

On Sunday, Airbus boss Thomas Enders, who could also face questioning in connection with the probe, blasted it as a “show trial” in comments at a seminar in Farnborough, England before the start of an international airshow.

Stefan Zoller, head of the defence and security branch of EADS, said for his part that the whole investigation was “difficult to understand.”

A total of 17 current and former EADS directors, of whom 11 still work for the company, have been identified for questioning by the French stock market watchdog, the Autorite des Marches Financiers.

They include nine French nationals, four Germans, two Americans, one Finn and one British national.

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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