Mannesmann trial

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The Mannesmann trial was a sensational German economic criminal cases in the years 2004 to 2006 before District Court Dusseldorf . The subject of the proceedings was premium payments in connection with the hostile takeover of Mannesmann by the Vodafone Group in 2000. In particular, the amount of the premiums paid, the prominence of some of the accused and the then unresolved legal question of whether it is permissible to award premiums to employees to which they are not entitled under their service contract, the process attracted a lot of media and public attention.

Charge

The defendants Joachim Funk (formerly Chairman of the Board of Management and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Mannesmann AG), Josef Ackermann (formerly Chairman of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank ), Klaus Zwickel (formerly Chairman of IG Metall ) and Jürgen Ladberg (formerly Chairman of the Works Council of Mannesmann AG) were accused of being members the Supervisory board Standing Committee (Bureau) of the former Mannesmann AG in close temporal relation to its acquisition by the British telecommunications company Vodafone Airtouch plc by granting voluntary special payments and settlement of pension claims infidelity within the meaning of § 266 of the Criminal Code to the detriment of Mannesmann AG to have committed. The defendants Klaus Esser (then CEO of Mannesmann AG) and Dietmar Droste (then head of the department responsible for looking after active board members) are said to have supported several acts by preparing resolutions and implementing them ( aiding and abetting breach of trust in accordance with Section 27 of the Criminal Code). The members of the Executive Committee involved in the decisions are said to have been aware that the special payments, which were described as recognition bonuses for special services rendered in the past, were actually useless for Mannesmann AG and unlawfully enriched the recipients.

chronology

  • November 14, 1999: Vodafone boss Chris Gent submits a takeover offer to Mannesmann shareholders; Mannesmann CEO Klaus Esser refuses and is looking for merger partners himself
  • February 3, 2000: Mannesmann and Vodafone decide to merge after an expensive battle for the favor of large investors
  • February 4 and 17, 2000: the Mannesmann Supervisory Board meets and deals with special payments to managers.
  • February 18, 2000: IG Metall publishes a press release. She writes in it that the special payments are "indecently high and no longer understandable for any employee".
  • February 23, 2000: The Stuttgart prosecutors Binz and Sorg refund criminal complaint against Esser for breach of the Companies Act
  • 17 February 2003: The prosecution raises charges of infidelity against Esser, the members of the supervisory board Joachim Funk , Josef Ackermann , Klaus Zwickel , Juergen Ladberg and secretary Dietmar Droste
  • July 22, 2004: The Düsseldorf regional court acquitted the six defendants; the public prosecutor's office announces an appeal before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH)
  • December 21, 2005: The BGH referred the proceedings back to the Düsseldorf Regional Court
  • October 26, 2006: The new version of the Mannesmann process begins
  • November 29, 2006: The proceedings are closed

First trial before the Düsseldorf Regional Court

In the course of the proceedings, numerous prominent witnesses were heard, including Chris Gent (Ex- CEO Vodafone), Julian Horn-Smith ( COO Vodafone), Canning Fok (Managing Director Hutchison Whampoa ), Alexander Dibelius (Germany boss Goldman Sachs ) and Henning Schulte- Noelle ( Chairman of the Allianz Board of Directors ).

On June 23, 2004 the public prosecutor applied for a three-year prison sentence for Joachim Funk and a two-year and six-month prison sentence for Klaus Esser. Josef Ackermann was to receive a prison sentence of two years for infidelity in a particularly serious case, Klaus Zwickel a prison sentence of one year and ten months. A prison sentence was also requested for Jürgen Ladberg. The Mannesmann employee Dietmar Droste should receive a prison sentence of one year. In the case of the defendants Ackermann, Zwickel, Ladberg and Droste, the execution of the sentence was to be suspended on probation .

On July 22, 2004, the trial ended after 24 weeks, 37 days of hearing and 55 witnesses. All of the defendants were acquitted .

The district court found that in granting the recognition bonus for CEO Esser and four other board members, the defendants Funk, Ackermann and Zwickel had acted in breach of stock corporation law and breached their asset management obligation towards Mannesmann AG. However, in the case of high-risk business decisions, a “serious” breach of duty is a prerequisite for criminal liability for breach of trust, which the defendants must deny. Therefore, the defendants Esser and Droste could not have assisted in this either. With regard to the granting of a recognition bonus for the defendant Funk, the defendants Ackermann and Zwickel had indeed fulfilled the offense of infidelity, since there was a serious breach of the duty to look after assets. However, to this extent they would have found themselves in an unavoidable error of prohibition ( § 17 StGB). (AZ: XIV 5/03 - judgment of July 22, 2004 - Düsseldorf Regional Court - NJW 2004, 3275).

When the verdict was pronounced, the chairman did not spare criticism of the public: politicians in particular tried to influence them and obtain a conviction. The prosecutors had instrumentalized the press ; Discussions were often held at the regulars table level.

Revision judgment of the Federal Court of Justice

The prosecution Dusseldorf appealed against the acquittal verdict of the District Court revision one. The appeal was represented by the Attorney General . Oral proceedings were held at the Federal Court of Justice on October 20 and 21, 2005.

In a judgment of December 21, 2005, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) discontinued the proceedings with regard to one charge, as the procedural requirements for an admissible charge were lacking. In addition, the BGH overturned the judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court with the findings and referred the matter back to another criminal chamber of the Düsseldorf Regional Court for a new hearing and decision. (AZ: 3 StR 470/04)

The BGH ruled that the defendants were guilty of breach of trust or aiding and abetting, according to the findings of the regional court, and that the regional court did not make sufficient determinations that the defendants had found themselves in an unavoidable error of prohibition.

The BGH summarized the relevant statements of the judgment, which were also significant beyond the specific case, in the following guiding principles:

  1. If the supervisory board of a stock corporation subsequently approves a member of the board of directors with a special payment not previously provided for in the service contract, which is exclusively of a rewarding nature and does not bring the company any future-related benefit (compensation-free recognition bonus), this constitutes an unfaithful damage to the company assets entrusted to it.
  2. The breach of the asset management obligation necessary to fulfill the offense of breach of trust does not have to be additionally "serious" even in the case of entrepreneurial decisions of a corporate body.

Second trial before the Düsseldorf Regional Court

On October 26, 2006, the new trial began before the Xth Major Criminal Chamber of the Düsseldorf Regional Court , chaired by Judge Stefan Drees . Originally, 25 days of negotiations were scheduled until the end of February. On November 24, 2006, the possibility of suspending the Mannesmann trial was announced. The process originally involved a loss of 58 million euros. At the start of the process at the end of October, Ackermann announced that he was earning 15 to 20 million euros gross annually. The proceedings were temporarily suspended on November 29, 2006 against a monetary requirement ( Section 153a, Paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure ) in the amount of 5.8 million euros on the basis of an application by the defense attorney, which the public prosecutor approved . Ackermann should pay 3.2 and Esser 1.5 million euros. Former supervisory board chairman Joachim Funk was supposed to pay one million euros and ex-IG Metall boss Klaus Zwickel 60,000 euros. For the works council chairman Jürgen Ladberg, the court set a monetary requirement of 12,500 euros and for the manager Dietmar Droste of 30,000 euros. After fulfilling the conditions, the proceedings were finally discontinued by the criminal chamber with a decision of February 5, 2007 in accordance with § 153a StPO. At the same time, 40% of the circulation - a total of € 2,321,000 - was distributed to over 350 non-profit organizations. The remaining 60% was allocated to the state treasury. The defendants had no previous convictions when the proceedings were closed. Josef Ackermann remained Deutsche Bank manager.

Reactions to the termination of the proceedings

In connection with this termination of the proceedings, there was talk of class justice . The legal policy spokesman for the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group , Jerzy Montag , said that every average citizen would feel the full severity of the law when they commit crimes with a few thousand euros in damage. “Not so, but Ackermann & Co. The public interest in the clarification of this so far largest German white-collar criminal proceedings with damages of over 60 million euros is immense and cannot be ignored. It is a scandal that the public prosecutor's office had this public interest bought off against payment of less than three months' salary, i.e. payable from the postage. ”In contrast, the Düsseldorf Regional Court pointed out that in 2003 a total of 126,174 proceedings were carried out by German courts in accordance with Section 153a StPO had been set against conditions, whereby the majority of the defendants in these cases did not have particularly high incomes or assets.

Web links

literature

  • Thomas Knipp: The deal. The story of the biggest takeover ever. Murmann Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-938017-88-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b manager-magazin.de: "Indecent high" (August 28, 2001)
  2. ^ Chronicle: The Mannesmann Trial, Handelsblatt, November 30, 2006
  3. ↑ Mannesmann: The third act FOCUS Magazin 42/2006 - FOCUS Online; Retrieved December 5, 2017
  4. ↑ Mannesmann trial: Richter proposes Ackermann on July 19 Manager Magazin Online, April 20, 2006, accessed on December 5, 2017
  5. ↑ The Mannesmann case is being rolled out again RP Online, October 25, 2006; Retrieved December 5, 2017
  6. ↑ Without judgment . FAZ.net , November 24, 2006
  7. ↑ Ackermann protests his innocence . FAZ.net , November 2, 2006
  8. ↑ sueddeutsche.de
  9. ↑ Class Justice . Stern , April 25, 2004
  10. ↑ sueddeutsche.de
  11. ↑ No second class acquittal . FAZ.net , November 29, 2006
  12. ↑ Düsseldorf Regional Court, decision of November 29, 2006 (gratis-urteile.de)