[Rassegna stampa] – There is no respite in the fight between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and General Motors. The two giants have been facing each other on a legal level for months, with GM accusing FCA of using offshore accounts to pay the unions at the time of the merger between Fiat and Chrysler.
“GM assured American justice that it had found, thanks to its own detectives, unpublished indications of the existence of secret accounts in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore and even Italy that would have been used by FCA for a plot of bribes once to damage GM in negotiations with the union on labor costs. “This network of accounts, used by the accused and controlled in part by individuals theoretically acting for GM, reveals a dimension of corruption and illegal activity that specifically targeted General Motors and was not known,” he says. And he adds, in particular, that the former member of the board of directors of GM and former trade unionist Joe Ashton, awaiting a sentence for corruption in the coming days, would actually have been one of the moles hired by the enemy.
FCA, a sign of the acrimony between the two companies, responded to General Motors with equally strong language. “GM’s amended appeal reads like a B movie script, full of absurd allegations that FCA would have paid spies to infiltrate GM and extract information using special funds in a vast network of foreign and secret bank accounts. None of this is true ». FCA went on to define “disgusting” the “insane accusations and no trace of evidence”. And she explicitly cited as her rival’s motivation, now as yesterday, the desire to sabotage the merger she orchestrated with the French PSA.
In recent weeks, a group of 27 FCA employees at the Toledo plant in Ohio has in turn sued both the company and the UAW. He claims the union buried concerns and demands for pay and contractual rights because of the illicit benefits that many of its officials received, from trips to luxury restaurants and mortgage payments. The auto union, still among the most influential with almost 400,000 members, is negotiating with the federal authorities the launch of internal reforms to avoid a drastic commissioner“.
Marco Valsania, The sun 24 hours
–
