The public prosecutor in Braunschweig, Germany, has opened an investigation into the death of a man which could be linked to an alleged industrial scandal in which the Volkswagen. At the moment, investigators have not yet identified the body found inside a burned car in Königslutter, about twenty kilometers south of Wolfsburg, and have not established the cause of the fire: the autopsy has not provided evidence that suggest a murder. A spokesman for the prosecution, however, told the Financial Times that there may be “a link” between the man’s death and the espionage scandal in which Volkswagen itself and the Bosnian supplier of Prevent components are involved.
Problems with a Bosnian supplier. The local newspaper Braunschweiger Nachrichten reported that the man was a Volkswagen employee suspended for the past few weeks. Earlier this month, in fact, the Wolfsburg manufacturer filed a criminal complaint against the worker, accusing him of having secretly recorded 50 meetings on disputes with Prevent, a company that in 2016 asked Volkswagen for compensation of € 58 million. for the failure of a collaborative project. The supplier had temporarily stopped sending certain parts, including seat covers and transmission components, to the manufacturer, causing temporary interruptions to production within the company’s factories. In 2018, Volkswagen decided to terminate all commercial relations with Prevent, but legal disputes are still ongoing.
A house also burned. In recent weeks, investigators had already opened another file to shed light on a fire that broke out in May in the home of a suspended Volkswagen employee: at the moment, it is unclear whether or not the case is connected with the espionage scandal, and whether the deceased man and the owner of the house are the same person. The spy story, however, is causing a different uproar: in July, for example, the German edition of Business Insider published the transcripts of some recordings of the meetings of the internal task force set up by the Wolfsburg brand in 2017 precisely to resolve the dispute with Prevent.
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