Buckle up folks, this will be a long and convoluted story of an initial white collar crime that leads to the death of a man. I don´t know how much it fits this sub because while this case is officially closed there are a lot of doubts about the conclusions of the prosecutors and a lot of open questions.
I will link all sources I can find. Mind you they are all in german and as I am german myself I can not guarantee that my summaries will be free of missspellings. I will be honest with you all, I used AI to gather sources but checked them and tried to rely as best as possible on german states media, neutral magazines and official press statements from the german justice system, but the whole text is written by me without AI.
All actors in this story will be introduced in detail, so there is no need to have prior knowledge of the european automobile market.
But let´s start at the beginning:
Chapter 1 - VW vs. Prevent:
It all starts around 2016 with a conflict between Volkswagen and the Prevent Group.
Before I continue some details to the background of these two companies:
I think I don´t need to say a lot about Volkswagen, or VW as it´s called more often. With it´s origins in the time of the national-socialist-reign in germany it became one of the biggest car manufacturers worldwide after the end of the second world-war.
While VW had it´s fair share of scandals like the „employment“ of forced laborers in Brasil [1] or the use of living apes for emissions tests [2], it´s biggest scandal came 2015 with the so called „Dieselgate“, where VW used a Shutdown-Software to manipulate the emissions of there diesel cars to meet the maximum emission values of the american market resulting in settlement with the justice departement in which VW needed to pay 4.1 billion dollars and high compensation for affected customers [3].
From this scandal VW has not recovered to this day and lead this gigantic corporation on a course of cost cotting and trying to maximize there profits again [4].
Now on to the Prevent Group: Founded after the fall of the iron curtain 1992 in bosnia by Nijaz Hastor Prevent quickly became a supplier for VW [5]. Before he founded the Prevent Group Hastor was a manager in the TAS-Car-Plant in the then communist jugoslawia where VW-Models were produced.
During the jugoslavian civil-war from which bosnia emerged he founded the Prevent DEV GmbH based in direct neigbourhood to VW in Wolfsburg, Germany.
Over the years the Prevent DEV bought the car-suppliers ES Automobilguss and Car Trim and by this became one of the most important suppliers for seat covers and transmission parts for the european car market.
This made Nijaz Hastor and his family to one of the richest families in bosnia [6].
And now finally back to the conflict between these two companies:
VW, trying to cut costs in the aftermath of „Dieselgate“ wanted lower prices and more flexible contracts with Prevent while Prevent wanted higher prices for their parts and more fixed delivery quantities.
This is nothing extraordinary regarding negotiations between corporations but in this case it escalated so far that Prevent stopped to deliver the needed parts so that VW had to stop the production of theire flagship model, the golf, entirely for a time in 2016 [7].
What followed were more negotiations and legal proceedings with compromises at the end to start production again, but the business relationship between VW and prevent was permanently damaged.
This brings us to our next section:
Chapter 2 - What to do with Prevent?:
In the aftermath VW wanted to make sure, that something like this, where a supplier could halt the whole production, won´t happen again in the future.
To work on a plan VW installed a Taskforce called „Projekt 1“ consisting of hand picked managers which should develop a plan in secret to „get rid“ of Prevent [8].
This Taskforce was active in the time from 2017 to 2018.
To elaborate: This wasn´t an official board that could decide in which direction VW should move but more like a „Think-Tank“ that should discuss strategys to basically destroy Prevent.
Part of these discussions where plans that bordered on illegality like pushing them out of the supplier network [9].
While this may not sound like it would be illegal, in front of german courts this could be rated as an exploitation of their market power and with that as an abusive market strategy which after Section 19 and Section 19a of the Gesetz gegen Wettbewerbsschränkungen (Law against restrictions on competition) is illegal in germany [10].
With all that in mind we move on:
Chapter 3 - The Mole:
We jumpt into the year 2020: The weakly magazine „Business Insider“ published an article called „VW-Tapes“ in their issue from the 25. of july.
In this article they write about how around 50 hours of audio records have surfaced in which high-ranking managers of VW, part of a so called „Projekt 1“, talk about how they could get rid of Prevent.
They talk about strategies on how to destroy Prevent, they talk about their own good connections to former german chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and how his connection to Vladimir Putin could help them „turn off the money tap“ for Prevent in Russia, something that is especially wrong if one thinks about how the federal state of Lower Saxony holds around 20% of VW [11].
From now on the so called „Abhöraffäre“ (wiretapping affair) moves like a raging fire through the german press landscape.
VW has no other option than to confess the existance and purpose of the taskforce „Projekt 1“ and that they are searching for the mole who made and leaked the records [12].
Soon after these tapes surfaced they found the possible creator:
Chapter 4 - A Suspect:
While his name was never publicly stated VW quickly found his suspected spy:
A 37 year old man who worked in the middle management of VW and who was present at the 35 meetings from which the tapes where created.
As part of the subsequent investigations the manager was suspended until further notice [13].
From now on I will call him „Mole“.
The public prosecutors office in brunswick (which had the jursidiction in this case) initiated criminal proceedings under Section 23 of the Gesetz zum Schutz von Geschäftsgeheimnissen (Law on the Protection of Trade Secrets) and Section 201 Strafgesetzbuch (criminal code) against the man because of the violation of trade secrects [14].
But this is not the end of the story…:
Chapter 5 - Fire and Death:
In the night from the 25. to the 26. of may 2020 in the small town of Grasleben, around 29 kilometers, or 18 miles for you americans, from the headquarters of VW in Wolfsburg a house burned down to its foundations.
The house belonged to the aforementioned „mole“. Nothing could be safed from the home but luckily no one was at home at the time when the fire broke out [15].
Shortly after that on the 10. of september 2020 a burned-out car was found on a dirt road in Rottorf, not far from Grasleben. Inside that car the body of the „mole“ was found.
The public prosecutors office in brunswick started their investigation but assumed early on that it was a suicide [16].
An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was smoke inhalation and the vehicle and fire analysis determined that the fire was caused by driving onto the embankment.
In their press release from the 16. of july 2021 the prosecution talks about an „atypical suicide“ and that they could find no evidence of external influence [17].
They write about the findings of suicide letters.
In the same statement they talk about house fire. They determined that this fire definetly was arson but that they could not find a definitive suspect.
The suspicion against two men, aged 33 and 61 respectively, who had prior convictions for theft, could not be substantiated.
There is also no concrete evidence to suggest that the arson was committed to destroy evidence in connection with a possible burglary.
Chapter 6 - Open Questions:
There are a lot of questions that to this day could not be answered and maybe never will.
The most important of them:
- Who was responsible for the arson on the „Mole's“ house?
- Was the arson connected to the wiretapping affair?
- Did the „mole“ make the tapes of his own volition or was he commissioned by someone?
- Was his death realy a suicide or was someone else responsible for it.
This is the end so far of this not so short summary of the wiretapping affair and the death that could could be related to it.
I hope this text makes sense, as said before, english is not my first language.
Edit: Had to edit this because of formating.
Sources:
[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/amerika/vw-brasilien-sklavenarbeit-verurteilung-100.html
[3] https://lobbypedia.de/wiki/Chronik_des_VW-Abgasskandals
[4] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/volkswagen-dieselgate-zehn-jahre-100.html
[5] https://www.preventgroup.com/about-us
[6] https://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/auto/spurensuche-in-bosnien-woher-kommen-die-hastors/19841820.html
[10] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gwb/__19a.html