Prosecutor adds ex-Deutsche Bank operations chief to Kirch probe
By Jörn Poltz
MUNICH (Reuters) - German prosecutors have widened an investigation of Deutsche Bank executives over the 2002 collapse of the Kirch media empire to include the bank’s former chief operating officer Hermann-Josef Lamberti, a Munich judge said on Tuesday.
Adding Lamberti, who left Deutsche Bank in 2012, raises to nine the number of bank executives past and present to be investigated in the 13-year-old saga.
Five are currently on trial accused of misleading investigators in connection with the collapse of the Kirch group. Lamberti has not been charged with anything.
Judge Peter Noll told the courtroom Lamberti had declined to exercise his right to speak, in the first official indication that he had been pulled into the Kirch case.
It was the second day of proceedings in one of the most high-profile corporate cases in post-war Germany.
Lamberti’s lawyer declined to comment. Deutsche Bank also declined to comment, but said: "The presumption of innocence applies to all former and current members of the management board."
Separately, the bank's co-CEO Juergen Fitschen put his plans to speak to the court on hold, with his lawyer saying prosecutors had withheld evidence.
Fitschen and his predecessor Josef Ackermann, who led Deutsche Bank as CEO for 10 years up to 2012, were expected to address the court on Tuesday.
The trial began last week with the five defendants accused of giving misleading evidence in connection with Kirch’s bankruptcy in 2002, including former Deutsche Bank CEO Rolf Breuer.
But they objected, saying prosecutors had not shared all evidence in their possession, making it difficult to understand the charges and possible contradictions within them.
“Before Mr. Fitschen can make a statement it needs to be established without any doubt how the accusations of deception concern him,” said Fitschen’s lawyer Barbara Livonius.
Prosecutors said they had shared everything. “The prosecutor never withheld any documentation of any kind,” said prosecutor Stephan Necknig.
The closely watched case threatens to become a distraction for Fitschen, charged with leading a restructuring of Deutsche Bank announced in April that has left investors disappointed.
Fitschen, 66, has vowed to fight the criminal allegations, which follow a civil suit brought by heirs of late media magnate Leo Kirch. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Fitschen and his co-defendants, including former Deutsche management board members Clemens Boersig and Tessen von Heydebreck, are obliged to attend weekly hearings scheduled to run until September. All have denied the charges.
After 12 years of legal wrangling, Deutsche Bank settled the civil suit in February 2014 in a deal that cost the bank about 925 million euros (£681 million).
(Writing by Thomas Atkins; Editing by Mark Potter)
