Have Volkswagen works council members been paid excessive works council salaries? The Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office has therefore initiated a search at the car manufacturer.
There was an investigation at VW in Wolfsburg because of allegations of excessive works council salaries. “The background is salary payments to works council members in violation of the prohibition of favoritism in the Works Constitution Act,” explained a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office when asked by the dpa. In this context there were several searches on Tuesday. The “Wolfsburger Allgemeine” had previously reported on it.
According to information from corporate circles, several offices at VW were searched and documents and data were seized. According to the public prosecutor’s office, four private apartments “that have nothing to do with VW” were also searched. These were “sometimes searches of unsuspected people.”
The background is the proceedings that have been ongoing for years due to the suspicion of excessive works council salaries at Volkswagen. At the beginning of this year, the Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) overturned acquittals for four former VW personnel managers whom the public prosecutor’s office accused of breach of trust because they were said to have approved excessive salaries for works councils. Now the proceedings must be reopened before the Braunschweig regional court, which initially acquitted the four.
Source: Stern
