VW must pay because of the diesel affair a billion euros fine to Lower Saxony. But the country sits with two representatives in the supervisory board of the group. That would be strange, finds the economist Christian Strenger.
Volkswagen logo on a VW Golf shines in front of the company’s headquarters
Friday, 15.06.2018
19:01 clock
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Strenger, in the diesel affair gets the country Lower Saxony one billion euro fine from Volkswagen transferred. Is that fair?
Christian Strenger, b. 1943, economist with a focus on corporate governance and asset management. Strenger is a founding member of the Government Commission on the German Corporate Governance Code and today sits on the Supervisory Board of DWS Investment, whose spokesman he was for a long time.
Strenger: That looks like right pocket, left pocket. Lower Saxony is one of the controlling shareholders of VW and sits on the supervisory board presidency. After all, it would have been the task of the two state representatives to control the executive board and its many years of activity efficiently. Now Niedersachsen collects a lot of money for its lack of control – that’s pretty absurd.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What should Lower Saxony spend the money on?
Strenger: The country would be well advised to use the money for air quality improvement. That should hardly happen, because it would be the admission to have failed in the diesel scandal.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the fine high enough?
Stronger: In relation to eleven million manipulated engines the fine is a small number, In North America alone VW had to pay penalties and compensation of 25 billion euros. The good thing, however, is that the prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig comes to the conclusion in its explanatory statement that there are “breaches of supervisory duties” at VW, which may have further consequences.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What’s the point from your point of view?
Strenger: For VW it is now even more difficult to keep the corporate leadership out of responsibility for the diesel scandal.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How do you come to this conclusion?
Strenger: Even the harmless classification as an administrative offense should not be without consequences for the Supervisory Board and Management Board. By law, these bodies must be responsible for serious breaches of duty as so-called organizational negligence.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: According to a statement from VW, this duty to cover only relates to the unit development unit. There is nothing of the Management Board or the Supervisory Board.
Strenger: This has been rectified by the prosecutor immediately, since the engine development is a core area of Volkswagen, for which at least one board is responsible. That’s not the post office! It is hardly a matter of time until the first German court sees the management levels responsible for the diesel scandal.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is wrong with the VW Supervisory Board?
Strenger: There are practically no independent supervisory boards at Volkswagen. The members are mainly provided by the families Porsche / Piëch, Lower Saxony or Qatar. But if there were established supervisory board members with real independence, they would finally work through the causes of the diesel affair convincingly and make it transparent.