Winterkorn quit as CEO last September after the company admitted to cheating USA emissions tests and disclosed that manipulated software used to rig tests had been fitted in up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
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He and a number of other former VW employees have meanwhile already come under investigation by Braunschweig prosecutors on charges of fraud.
FILE In this May 13, 2014 file picture then Volkswagen CEO, Martin Winterkorn, stands next to a VW vehicle at the annual shareholder meeting in Hannover, Germany.
German prosecutors said today that they’ve launched a probe into the former chief executive of Volkswagen over possible market manipulation in relation to the carmaker’s emissions scandal.
Volkswagen first issued a disclosure on the matter on September 22, 2015.
The investigation was brought forward by Germany’s financial regulator BaFin, which looks into criminal complaints brought forward by individuals and organizations and then decides whether there is enough evidence for a formal investigation.
The company said earlier that the issue was believed to be something that could be resolved through a settlement that would not impose heavy costs, and it still believed that to be the case in early September 2015.
Current Volkswagen Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, the carmaker’s finance chief at the time, is not being probed, the prosecutor’s office further said, without disclosing the name of the second top executive under investigation.
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Last year, USA regulators discovered that VW cars were fitted with software that could distort emissions tests. Some 11 million such cars were sold worldwide.
