Volkswagen scandal in Germany

This video from Germany is called Made in Germany. Tax Scandal.

From British weekly The Observer:

Bribery, brothels, free Viagra: VW trial scandalises Germany

Tales of high-level sleaze heard in court have angered millions afflicted by welfare cuts and a pay freeze

Kate Connolly in Berlin

Sunday January 13, 2008

For years, it is a wonder that Volkswagen managed to produce any cars at all. Europe’s biggest automobile company, and the leading symbol of corporate Germany, was embroiled in a widespread scandal involving sex, bribery and pleasure trips, the scale of which the continent has not seen before.

In a courtroom investigation in Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, in the north west, details of the €2.5m affair have been unfolding and the nation has been poring over the lurid details. They involve a string of expensive hookers, sex parties and expense-account shopping trips which took place over the best part of a decade, endorsed by a management keen to buy the support of union officials and the shopfloor at a critical time for the company. The scandal has claimed the scalp of the personnel director Peter Hartz – who was convicted at a trial last year – along with two senior managers and the chairman of the powerful works council.

Volkswagen boss Peter Hartz, in the midst of these scandals, is also infamous as the architect of the Hartz IV law. In that law, Hartz attacked the rights of unemployed people in Germany. Attacks on unemployed people are often accompanied by lots of noise about how “immoral” poor people supposedly are. Well, now we know how “moral” rich Mr Hartz is; unfortunately, after his plans became law.

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