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Ex-boss of VW being investigated for market fixing

Volkswagen's former boss Martin Winterkorn is under investigation for having allegedly manipulated the market by holding back information about emissions cheating at the automobile giant, prosecutors said Monday.

Published: 20 June 2016 16:36 CEST

Ex-boss of VW being investigated for market fixing

Martin Winterkorn. Photo: DPA

“The initial suspicion of market manipulation is directed against two former board members of the VW Group. Among them is the former chief executive of the Volkswagen group, Professor Dr Martin Winterkorn,” said prosecutors in Lower Saxony where VW is based in a statement.

Investigators did not name the second suspect but said the individual was not the group's current chairman.

Listed companies are required to disclose information that could affect market prices immediately.

But VW complied with its disclosure obligation only on September 22, 2015, prosecutors said, four days after US regulators went public that they were charging the company for fitting devices designed to skew emissions data in their vehicles.

“There are sufficient indications suggesting that the obligation to make a disclosure statement could have been met at an earlier date,” prosecutors said.

Shares in VW plunged 17.14 percent on Monday September 21, the first trading day after the US charge was made public.

They sank another 19.82 percent on Tuesday, wiping out €25 billion euros in market capitalisation in two days.

Winterkorn stepped down as CEO of the car giant on September 23rd while denying any knowledge of the so-called defeat devices installed in the cars.

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Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

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