VOW3 Volkswagen AG

   By Max Bernhard 
 

The executive committee of Volkswagen AG's (VOW.XE) supervisory board said Tuesday that it disagrees with charges brought by German prosecutors against the car maker's chief executive, chairman and a former boss.

The Braunschweig public prosecutor accuses CEO Herbert Diess, as well as Volkswagen's former CEO Martin Winterkorn and Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch of deliberately informing the market too late about payment obligations in the billions resulting from the company's diesel scandal.

The committee, which is chaired by Mr. Poetsch himself but also has the Minister President of Lower Saxony Stephan Weil and Volkswagen's labor chief Bernd Osterloh among its members, said it will continue to work with Mr. Diess and Mr. Poetsch.

Other committee members are Joerg Hofmann, the chairman of Germany's powerful IG Metall union, as well as Audi AG (NSU.XE) labor chief Peter Mosch and Wolfgang Porsche.

Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to having rigged some 11 million of its diesel vehicles globally with software that allowed them to dodge government emissions tests. The company's share price plummeted in the days after the diesel emissions scandal erupted.

The committee said Tuesday that the US authorities published their allegations, which led the company's shareprice to tumble, completely unexpectedly and that Volkswagen's board couldn't have foreseen this change in the US authorities' approach. Therefore the board didn't have sufficiently concrete indications that would have led to the obligation to inform the capital market immediately, it said.

Write to Max Bernhard at max.bernhard@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 24, 2019 10:32 ET (14:32 GMT)

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