Volkswagen management under renewed pressure over emissions scandal
Volkswagen’s (VW) management will this afternoon face questioning from the company’s shareholders over the handling of the diesel-emissions crisis and its aftermath.  Several institutional investors have encouraged shareholders not to ratify the behaviour of the carmaker’s senior management and supervisory boards leading, in effect, to a vote of no confidence. As we have already reported, prosecutors in Germany this week launched an investigation into whether former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn and head of VW brand Herbert Diess were too slow to inform investors about the potential costs of the scandal. Earlier this week, the Boston Retirement System pension fund also filed the first bondholders class action against VW.

German law requires publicly traded companies to alert investors as soon as unforeseen developments could affect a decision to buy or sell a stock. Prosecutors said Volkswagen made that notification Sept. 22, but there was evidence the disclosure should have been made earlier.

The Braunschweig prosecutor’s spokesman, Matthias Diekman, said the probe was opened at the behest of Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

BERLIN — Prosecutors are investigating former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn and another unnamed executive over allegations they didn’t inform investors soon enough about the company’s scandal over cars rigged to cheat on US diesel emissions tests.

Volkswagen said it had the issue reviewed by outside lawyers who found ‘‘no clear or serious violations of duty’’ and that the prosecutor’s statement contained ‘‘no new facts or findings over possible violations’’ by the two executives. The company had already said in response to an investor lawsuit that it met its disclosure obligation.

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Volkswagen has said Winterkorn was sent a memo on May 23, 2014, about emissions irregularities uncovered by an environmental group, but the company was not sure he saw it, and top officials discussed the matter on July 27, 2015.

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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.

On September 18, the US Environmental Protection Agency issued a violation notice, leading Volkswagen to assess the risks as more serious and issue its investor advisory four days later.

Prosecutors said the second employee is not the current board chairman, Hans Dieter Poetsch. He was chief financial officer under Winterkorn but has since left that post.

Winterkorn stepped down as the scandal came to light, ‘‘in the interests of the company even though I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part.’’

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Volkswagen has admitted equipping cars with software that sensed when the car was on a test stand and turned off emission controls during everyday driving. The company has apologized and commissioned a law firm to investigate. It is negotiating a settlement with US authorities in federal court in San Francisco on how it would fix or buy back some 500,000 diesels sold in the United States. Some 11 million such cars were sold worldwide.

Volkswagen has set aside 16.2 billion euros ($18.3 billion) from last year’s earnings to deal with the costs of recalls and fixes.