Gm, Volkswagen Face Kickback Probe

Prosecutors in Germany, Switzerland and the United States are reportedly investigating charges that purchasing managers at General Motors and Volkswagen took hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks.

According to a report in this week’s Der Spiegel magazine, former members of a team led by Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua are among those allegedly involved in the bribery scheme.

Lopez, GM Europe’s former purchasing chief, jumped ship to VW with his team in 1993 and was later accused of stealing trade secrets. VW agreed in January to pay GM $100 million and buy $1 billion worth of GM parts to settle a civil suit. Lopez resigned from VW in November.

On Monday, Volkswagen spokesman Kurt Rippholz said the company had filed a complaint against “unknown persons” with a local prosecutor as a procedural step. He refused further comment, saying VW did not want to interfere with the investigation.

In Detroit, GM spokesman John Mueller said only that the company was looking into the bribery allegations.

Allegations arose last month that a VW employee sought $12 million in payoffs from the Swedish-Swiss engineering group Asea Brown Boveri in return for a contract to enlarge a factory for VW’s Czech Republic-based Skoda subsidiary.

VW last month suspended a manager pending the results of that investigation.