Impossible, given the interest aroused by the hearings, to stay in the local ties of the court of Brunswick (Lower Saxony). To accommodate the first major lawsuit of shareholders against the Volkswagen group (VW), which opens Monday 10 September, it is the congress room of the town hall, is much broader, which has been chosen. In addition to the curious public, the number of complainants is considerable : nearly two thousand shareholders of the group accuse VW and its parent company, Porsche SE, has been informed too late of the likely consequences of the manipulation of millions of diesel engines, in September 2015.
Grouped together in a collective complaint behind Deka, the investment fund of the savings banks in germany, these shareholders are clamoring to VW 9 billion euros of damages and interests. There are just three years old, they had seen him collapse in a few hours the value of their investment in the capital of the manufacturer : Friday, 18 September 2015, the u.s. agency for the environment (EPA) published a statement (” notice of breach “) accusing Volkswagen of breaching for several years the american rules concerning the protection of the environment, because its diesel engines were equipped with illegal software. The statement had caused a collapse of more than 30 % of the market price of the shares in Volkswagen.