VW Says GM Faked Charges to Smear Former Star Exec : Autos: The chairman claims allegations of industrial espionage were trumped up to seek “revenge.” GM denies it.
The high-stakes international battle between Volkswagen and General Motors escalated Wednesday, as beleaguered VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech accused the Americans of trumping up charges of industrial espionage in a smear campaign against the star executive he lured away from GM.
Publicly answering allegations by GM and its German-based Adam Opel AG unit for the first time since the scandal erupted four months ago, Piech claimed that Volkswagen tops a “European auto hit-list” allegedly kept by the Detroit auto maker--a charge GM brusquely denied.
Despite pressure from the Bonn government to dismiss VW production chief Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua--the man at the center of the firestorm--Piech pledged his full support for Lopez.
German prosecutors are investigating GM charges that Lopez spirited away company secrets when he defected to VW in March, taking a half-dozen key GM and Opel colleagues with him. Lopez is currently on vacation in his native Spain.
“From my point of view, the way the American concern GM/Opel is conducting a personal campaign of revenge against Dr. Lopez is intolerable,” Piech told journalists at VW headquarters in Wolfsburg. Reading from a prepared statement, he accused GM of “misusing the state prosecutors, the media and the public to sully our company.”
Piech, whose struggling company is Europe’s biggest car maker, attempted to rally European competitors to VW’s side, warning close rivals Fiat and Peugeot that they could be targeted next “if the GM war against Volkswagen is lost.”
Hinting that VW may sue GM for slander and damages, Piech declared: “I do not see a peaceful end to this conflict.”
VW stock jumped $6.78 after Piech’s nationally televised press conference to $208.37 in German trading.
Opel quickly retaliated with an acidic denial, accusing Piech of stooping to “an astonishingly low level” in the battle between the two auto-making giants. Opel dismissed Piech’s statements as “fully without substance” and scheduled its own news conference this morning.
So far, the scandal has spun off three separate cases in Germany, including an unsuccessful bid by VW to muzzle the country’s most influential newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, which has published several investigative pieces about the affair, including a cover story on Lopez.
Opel won a court order in April barring VW from wooing any more key members of its German staff, claiming about 40 had been approached, including some contacted directly by Lopez. A court hearing is scheduled this fall on a GM complaint aimed at preventing seven former employees from working for VW for a year.
On the third front--a criminal investigation of industrial espionage charges--evidence gathered by investigators includes four cartons of confidential GM documents found at a Wiesbaden apartment leased by a former GM manager now employed by VW.
