Early this morning in the sleepy town of Stuttgart, a group of German police inspectors arrived at the Porsche->ke1 headquarters in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen complete with search warrants in hand in an attempt to uncover some evidence of suspicious activity. The search order was handed down by their local public prosecutor's office and dealt with the suspicion of breaching a publication duty as prescribed by the German Stock Corporation Act which means that they could have been manipulating the German market. The boys in blue who were on the scene were said to have seized numerous business documents by the end of their exploration.

Of course the German sports car manufacturer denies any allegations and are cooperating fully with the German officials in the hopes for a speedy resolution. Off the news that Porsche is making major moves on the financial market, recently selling 10% of their stock to a state run Quatar based investement group and only a short period of time after the Porsche/VW merger was completed, the perfect time for a world wide corporation to fudge some paperwork, not that this is the case. However now that the authorities are involved, this incident can't help but make you think back to this past January when one of the richest men in the world, Adolf Merckle, took his own life after betting wrong in a big way on the German automotive conglomerate VW, which is now quite entangled with the sports car maker Porsche.

Press release after the jump.

PRESS RELEASE

20/08/2009

Suspected Breach of Publicity Duties

The public prosecutor's office investigates at Porsche

Stuttgart. Investigative proceedings led by the public prosecutor's office have been carried out at Porsche Automobil Holding SE and Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, both in Stuttgart. This Thursday morning, officials from the public prosecutor's office in Stuttgart with judicial search warrants arrived at the administrative headquarters of the companies in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. The officials then searched the business premises of the companies, seizing numerous business documents in the process.

According to information provided by the public prosecutor's office in charge of investigations, there is a suspicion of breaching the publication duty as prescribed by the German Stock Corporation Act and furthermore of market manipulation.

Porsche is rejecting these allegations. The company is cooperating in the efforts of the public prosecutor's office and is offering investigating officials its full support in order to clarify the issue as quickly as possible.