Mercedes CEO dropped from murder investigation

Following the accidental death of a 27 year old test driver, it's been confirmed that Mercedes CEO Dieter Zetsche can not be made accountable for his accidental death. The engineer was killed in a car accident caused by a younger intern pulling out onto a high-speed test track.

His parents have said Mercedes should not have allowed the inexperienced young intern behind the wheel of a car. Senior public prosecutor Alexander Retemeyer said in a report: “There is an investigation. It is highly doubtful that the chief executive personally can be held responsible for this, however.”

Daimler claims that it had no idea of such probes and if they were researching, it should be aimed squarely at the group’s management board.

The spokesman also said: “There is already a ruling from the district court in Papenburg in which the judge expressly found that Daimler could not be held at fault in any way for the accident.”

Daimler issued a statement saying: “In legal proceedings against the perpetrator of the accident before the Papenburg District Court on 12th July, both the judge and the public prosecutor explicitly stated that the company Daimler, and consequently also the Chairman of the Board of Management, were in no way to blame.

“In fact, the court found that the driver was solely to blame because he did not look straight ahead at the road in front of him for a distance of several kilometres. The initiation of preliminary investigations of the Board of Management is a pure formality. We assume that these proceedings will be discontinued.”