Dusseldorf For three and a half years, the public prosecutor’s office in Hanover has been investigating the emissions scandal surrounding the automotive supplier Continental. Employees are suspected of having helped the Volkswagen Group manipulate diesel engines. Now the public prosecutor’s office is calling back the man at the head of the investigation: Chief Public Prosecutor Malte Rabe von Kühlewein.
According to information from the Handelsblatt, the first prosecutor Agnes Blum will take over. A spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office confirmed Rabe’s move from Kühlewein to another department, but did not want to comment on the reasons. Rabe von Kühlewein himself left questions to him unanswered. A Continental spokesman said they had been informed of the change and saw no impact on cooperation with investigators.
Insiders report that Rabe von Kühlewein is not leaving the Dieselgate affair, the biggest scandal in the German auto industry, of his own volition. Instead, he was actively withdrawn from the case. The fact is: A change at the head of the investigative team is highly unusual and in this case a big surprise.
Prosecutors had Continental and Vitesco searched seven times
Rabe von Kühlewein is considered a meticulous and ambitious public prosecutor. He drove the investigations against Continental in the diesel scandal with great commitment for years. The Hanover public prosecutor’s office searched the locations of Continental and the Vitesco drive division, which has since been spun off, seven times alone.
According to information from the Handelsblatt, Rabe’s transfer from Kühlewein is indirectly related to an interrogation of Wolfgang Reitzle. When questioned by Rabe von Kühlewein on June 1, 2021, Continental’s chief supervisor claimed that up to that date he had not heard anything from company management about Continental’s possible involvement in the Dieselgate affair. The minutes are available to the Handelsblatt.
As a result, Reitzle acted as a cleaner. In the course of the investigation, CFO Wolfgang Schäfer, the chief lawyer and the head of compliance had to leave the company, even though they rejected the allegations.
Rabe von Kühlewein initiated investigations into all three on suspicion of infidelity. He based his initial suspicion on the thesis that the three executives had attempted a kind of conspiracy to sweep the diesel affair under the rug. Reitzle’s statement was consistent with this.
Contradictory statements
The interrogation of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Schaeffler, which is available to the Handelsblatt, shows how much Rabe von Kühlewein liked the portrayal of Reitzle. The billionaire and main shareholder of the automotive supplier had been on Continental’s supervisory board for more than ten years when he appeared on June 10, 2021 at the Hanover public prosecutor’s office.
After a general scrutiny, Rabe von Kühlewein came up with a supposedly sensitive point in the handling of the diesel affair at Continental: an expert opinion from the Noerr law firm. On October 6, 2015, the Executive Board commissioned Noerr to get to the bottom of Continental’s possible involvement in the diesel scandal. The name of the investigation: lupus.
Briefed by Reitzle just a few days earlier, Rabe von Kühlewein asked numerous questions about the Lupus project. Schaeffler said its goal was to uncover the company’s possible complicity in the diesel affair.
The chief public prosecutor insisted that Schaeffler was sure. Documents were available to his authority, according to which Noerr should not even check whether Conti was involved in the scandal, but should prove that this was not the case. That is a crucial difference. But Schaeffler stuck to it: the aim and purpose of the investigation was to investigate whether Continental had dirt on it.
Did a statement by the Continental supervisory board head lead the investigators on the wrong track?
(Photo: Linde AG)
The assumption that Continental does not want an open-ended test has a catch anyway. Because Noerr wrote that there is indeed a problem: at least two Continental employees at the lower hierarchical level, wrote the law firm, had understood how the exhaust gases were manipulated since 2008 at the latest. Excerpts of the report are available to the Handelsblatt.
In December 2008, before it was ready for series production, the two Continental employees in question had found that the exhaust emission limit values were being exceeded. “It cannot be ruled out that the public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig (or another public prosecutor’s office) could initiate investigations with regard to the Continental employees concerned.”
>> Read also: Shareholder representatives refuse to discharge Conti chief supervisor Wolfgang Reitzle
The head of compliance presented the Noerr report at a meeting of the Audit Committee of the Continental Supervisory Board on May 2, 2016. Reitzle and Schaeffler were there. In September 2016, the panel was informed that four employees may have been aware of the manipulations. Then things went quiet for a few years. Not until 2020 began the wave of searches led by Rabe von Kühlewein.
Reitzle’s momentous testimony
The public prosecutor questioned Reitzle in June 2021. The investigator asked him whether the chairman of the supervisory board had actually read the investigation report by the Noerr law firm on the diesel issue himself. Reitzle’s answer: no. The investigation to clarify what the biggest scandal in the German auto industry meant for Continental only went to CEO Elmar Degenhart and the chief lawyer, said Reitzle.
That surprised the investigator. Reitzle said that he initiated the report himself, said senior public prosecutor Rabe von Kühlewein. Then, of course, the question had to be asked why Reitzle did not have the report presented to him. Because he absolutely relied on Degenhart, Reitzle replied. He simply did not believe that he had to read the report himself, said the head of the supervisory board.
In addition, said Reitzle, the chief lawyer had also confirmed to him that there was no danger for Conti in the diesel affair. The man was always correct for him, always legally precise. He never had a reason to doubt his words.
Rabe von Kühlewein put the people on the list of suspects who charged Reitzle: the chief financial officer, the chief legal officer and the head of compliance. It is now questionable whether the suspicion that the managers who have left the company tried to sweep the involvement of Continental employees under the rug will ever be confirmed. The damage is immense: for the company, but also for the resigned executives, who are still suspected of breach of trust today.
A new internal investigation by law firms Skadden Arps and Knauer is ongoing. From group circles it is said that investigation theses of the public prosecutor’s office would be supported. The suspicion of infidelity against the former executives is not the core of the investigation.
More: The yields of most auto parts suppliers have just recovered somewhat. With the planned austerity program from Volkswagen, the mood in the industry is changing