BERLIN, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Braunschweig state prosecution office is investigating the carmaker Volkswagen AG on suspicion of manipulating financial markets during the "dieselgate" scandal, the magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, state prosecutors searched 13 offices at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg corporate headquarters in March, confiscating documents and large volumes of digital data. The investigators believe that investors could have been purposefully misled by the carmaker about the extent of its involvement in the ongoing "dieselgate" scandal.
"Wirtschaftswoche" cited a spokesperson for the Braunschweig state prosecution office who said that the objective of the raids was to assess whether an ad-hoc statement released by Volkswagen on revelations of emissions-cheating software in December 2015 was "objectively false."
In the statement in question, Volkswagen revised an earlier estimate that 80,000 cars in its fleet could be affected by the "dieselgate" scandal down to a lower figure of 36,000 on the alleged basis of company measurements. The Braunschweig state prosecution office told "Wirtschaftswoche", however, that it had found "sufficient factual indications" to suggest that this official depiction offered by the carmaker was "incorrect."
Volkswagen confirmed on Tuesday that its corporate premises had been searched by state prosecutors but refused to provide any further comment with reference to ongoing investigations. As a publically-listed company on the Frankfurt DAX exchange, the conscious provision of false information about its business to investors would constitute a criminal offence of market manipulation.
Braunschweig and Stuttgart state prosecutors are already conducting official investigations into several suspects in connection to Volkswagen's role in the dieselgate scandal, including with regards to the possibility of other instances of market manipulation by ex-chief executive officer Martin Winterkorn, board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and Volkswagen brand-manager Herbert Diess.
