Reason:
It is unacceptable that the members of the Board of Management are entitled to bonus payment of millions of euros every year, although presumably some of the longstanding members simultaneously did enormous damage to the company in nine-digit amounts due to the current corruption scandal.
The offer to pay settlement in an amount of approximately 185 million US dollars says it all. It is certainly financially advantageous for our company and therefore correct to seek a settlement. At the same time, this procedure indicates why the Board of Management is so keen to end the investigations that have been going on for several years. According to the US Department of Justice, the top management levels were involved in the illegal actions, because at least one member of the top management had to approve the opening of a “black-money” account.
There are also clear indications that the former head of Daimler’s Internal Auditing department warned the Board of Management already in 2000 about the system of internal foreign accounts. At that time, Jürgen Schrempp was Chairman and Dieter Zetsche was a member of the Board of Management.
Daimler AG is supposed to have made such payments for a decade until 2008 through a network including more than 200 foreign accounts. Monies were paid into at least 22 countries. The US Ministry writes of ‘a corporate culture that tolerated and promoted bribery.’
The complaint was triggered by a courageous former employee who adhered very well to the ethical guidelines. But the accountant was then dismissed after questioning accounts controlled by Mercedes-Benz subsidiaries in South America.
This makes it clear that Daimler AG chose the right way in the direction of compliance. ‘Promoting adherence to applicable laws and regulations, to the related internal guidelines and procedures, as well as to voluntary commitments in all business activities’ is stated by Daimler AG in a letter to the Association of Critical Shareholders (www.kritischeaktionaere.de) as being the ‘top priority of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and its employees.’ But the ‘zero tolerance principle’ demanding that so-called whistleblowers are treated fairly has existed only since January 2008 (see http://www.whistleblower-netzwerk.de).
Whistleblowers within the Group are recognized as having a corrective influence and are supported, which is hereby expressly welcomed. But there are also whistleblowers outside the Group, including us, the Critical Daimler Shareholders (KAD). Jürgen Grässlin, a spokesman of the KAD, stated in the summer of 2005 in an interview on the announcement of the resignation of the then Chairman of the Board of Management Jürgen Schrempp that he also had to resign because his business had likely ‘not always been so clean.’ This suspicion has become more concrete at the latest now – in a bitter and expensive way.
It contradicts the compliance guidelines that legal action was taken on several occasions by Schrempp and the Group against a critic of dubious gray-market and corrupt practices with sound arguments (www.daimler-prozesse.net). It is also incomprehensible why the costs of the lawsuit against Grässlin, which was rightly lost in the Federal Supreme Court on September 22, 2009, have to be paid by the Group and implicitly by all shareholders – and not by those persons whose business was apparently not always so clean.