Massive amounts of material missing
Aurubis peak is about to end after a million-dollar heist
January 22, 2024, 7:13 p.m
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Fraudsters are doing big business at Aurubis and are likely to be taking advantage of the company for years to come. It is being determined to what extent board members are partly to blame for the loss of around 185 million euros. For most of the company’s top management, the end is near.
At the copper company Aurubis, three out of four board members are about to leave after a fraud case worth millions. CEO Roland Harings, CFO Rainer Verhoeven and Production Director Heiko Arnold are due to give up their positions in the next few months. Aurubis announced that discussions between the managers and “representatives of the supervisory board” about an early departure were well advanced. However, a decision is still pending from the supervisory board, which is scheduled to discuss the personnel details on Tuesday.
Of the current board, only recycling boss Inge Hofkens would remain in office. In order to replenish the board, long-time BASF manager Markus Kramer could be sent to the board for seven months from March. Kramer has been on the Aurubis supervisory board for eleven months.
According to the plans, CEO Harings, who has been in office for more than four years, is scheduled to leave at the end of September; his contract would run until mid-2027. Aurubis wants to part ways with CFO Verhoeven in the middle of the year, one and a half years before the contract expires. Production director Heiko Arnold is scheduled to leave at the end of February 2024.
The separation had become apparent. The supervisory board had already distanced itself from the executives in December and, in an unusual step, had its own top managers investigated: the law firm Hengeler Mueller was commissioned to investigate the extent to which the board of directors shared responsibility for the fraud scandal. The results should be available by mid-January, it was said at the time.
Valuable recycled material missing
Even back then, the supervisory board had reserved the right to separate managers early. The board of directors and supervisory board will not initially be discharged at the general meeting on February 15th. After the announcement, the Aurubis share fell by up to 4.9 percent to 63.06 euros – the lowest level since the beginning of September 2023 – making it the biggest loser in the MDax.
Fraudsters had been fleecing Europe’s largest copper company for years. The company is missing valuable recycled material worth 185 million euros. According to the company, the perpetrators worked with manipulated samples. The suspicion is directed against scrap suppliers and our own employees, it was said.