The death of a VW employee suspected to have illegally recorded 50 hours of conversations from the company’s internal meetings is treated by German prosecutors as a likely suicide.
While authorities did not comment on the identity of the deceased man found inside a burned-out car near Helmstedt earlier this month, they did say he was the owner of the vehicle. Mind you, the car had already been confirmed as being registered in his name.
Citing unidentified sources, local newspaper Helmstedter Nachrichten said last week the dead person was a VW employee who had done business with Bosnian supplier Prevent Group. According to the Braunschweig public prosecutor, initial evidence points to suicide. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said there are many indications of a suicide, although that hypothesis has not been conclusively clarified.
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Volkswagen said it was shocked by the incident and that it would support prosecutors where possible. “To our knowledge there is so far no reliable information on what led to the incident,” the automaker was quoted as saying by Reuters.
VW and the Bosnian supplier group fell out in 2016 following a disagreement over pricing that prompted Prevent subsidiaries to halt deliveries of seat covers and cast iron parts for gear boxes. This caused production losses at six VW plants. The two companies have since been involved in claims and counterclaims for damages caused by the dispute.
In March 2018, Volkswagen Group terminated all contracts with Prevent. The former VW employee, now found dead, allegedly had secretly recorded conversations from internal meetings in 2017 and 2018 dedicated to eliminating the supplier. Last month, the carmaker filed a criminal complaint against its employee and suspended him pending the result of an investigation. Prevent maintained it had no knowledge of the recordings.
In addition to the death of the former VW procurement manager, the Braunschweig public prosecutor said it was also investigating the circumstances of a possible arson attack on the man’s house. The building caught fire in May and was completely destroyed.
