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IPFS News Link • Crime

Volkswagen CEO, Chairman Charged With Market Manipulation In Emissions Scandal, Shares Tumble

• https://www.zerohedge.com by Tyler Durden

The revelation, which quickly erupted into a worldwide scandal, caused Volkswagen shares to erase nearly half of their value in the days over the next few days.

Now, Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Herbert Diess, Chairman Hans-Dieter Pötsch, and former CEO Martin Winterkorn have been charged with misleading shareholders. Since there's a securities fraud angle to most major corporate crimes, it's not surprising to see prosecutors going with the angle that the executives failed to inform shareholders about their company's misdeeds, which would soon be disclosed.

According to WSJ, the "surprise" indictment shows prosecutors in Braunschweig, the district that has jurisdiction over Volkswagen's Wolfsburg headquarters, clearly don't buy the company's defense: That its top executives had no way of knowing that the US investigation would lead to such massive losses.