Porsche boss in pre-trial detention since Thursday

A Porsche boss was detained in Germany in the wake of searches of the vast scandal of fake diesel engines, a car manufacturer spokesman said on Friday.

Porsche boss Oliver Blume has informed "the workers of the decision of the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's Office to have placed a manager of the company in custody", through a spokesman for the luxury car brand belonging to the Volkswagen group, quoted by AFP.

Without specifying the identity of the detainee, a spokesman for the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed the arrest of a suspect for "risk of escape and concealment of evidence", shortly after searches at the homes of two officials and a former Porsche.

According to German newspapers Bild and Wirtschaftwoche, the person in custody is Jörg Kerner, the former head of Porsche's engines, who worked at Audi when the scandal broke out.

The detainee has been in custody since Thursday night.

"Porsche does not develop or produce diesel engines or associated devices", the boss of the luxury brand defended in an email sent to workers and quoted in the German press.

Oliver Blume considered the devices installed in the diesel engines and suspected by the German courts of being addicted to be "unacceptable" and assured that Porsche was not aware of the situation.

More than 160 police and 30 magistrates were deployed for a large search operation in ten locations in Bavaria and in Baden-Wuerttemberg, targeting "a member of the board and a senior Porsche", as well as a former panel of the group which, meanwhile , passed to Audi, a source at the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's Office said.

These were the first searches aimed at Porsche in the scope of the dossier that, since the beginning of 2015, has involved the Volkswagen Group, which owns the brand.

Volkswagen has acknowledged that it has equipped 11 million diesel cars, of which about 600,000 in the United States, with a device capable of falsifying the results of the anti-pollution tests and masking the emissions that exceeded the authorized standards by up to 40 times.

Searches had already been made in places of Volkswagen and Audi.

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