The salary of the Chairman of the Labour Council is too high for tax evasion? Mass raid searched

According to foreign media reports, German prosecutors and tax authorities conducted raids on the offices of many senior executives on Tuesday. The raid was mainly directed at the doubts over the salary of Bernd Osterloh, Chairman of the Board of Labors, and Osterloh’s office was also searched.

A spokesman for the Volkswagen Press said that the investigators conducted searches on the offices of Hans Dieter Poetsch, chairman of the public board of supervisors, Frank Witter, chief financial officer, and Karlheinz Blessing, director of human resources; related documents and computers were also seized. Both the Labour Commission and the German local Braunschweig prosecutor did not immediately respond to the matter.

Related to the case revealed that the tax agency suspected the public suspected of tax evasion. Because overpayments will lead to extremely high operating expenses, the taxes paid will be relatively reduced.

The information previously disclosed revealed that the German prosecutor is investigating the excessive pay of current and former VW executives to Bernd Osterloh. In Germany, the waste of corporate funds is a violation of the trust principle at the legal level.

The Volkswagen union also pointed out in previous investigations that Osterloh’s salary is comparable to that of the general manager of the business department, which is lower than that of the management members. Osterloh said in an interview with the Braunschweig that he was comfortable with his salary. Osterloh revealed that his basic salary (excluding bonuses) is around 200,000 euros (about 1,508,260 renminbi), which means he has a one-year annual salary of up to 750,000 euros (about 5,656,000 renminbi), which may be lower now. In addition, Osterloh added that after Volkswagen's mass scandal in 2015, he hoped that his bonus reduction will be consistent with the reduction in worker bonuses.