Aurubis Sacks Top Executives After Metal Thefts

The decision was made during a meeting of the supervisory board, which under German law oversees and appoints the executive board.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Europe’s largest copper producer Aurubis has dismissed three of its top management, including the chief executive, following a scandal involving a string of metal thefts.

The Hamburg-based company on Tuesday said the contracts of CEO Roland Harings, chief financial officer Rainer Verhoeven and Heiko Arnold, the chief operating officer of custom smelting and products, had been terminated.

The decision came after Aurubis last year launched an independent legal review into the “responsibility of the executive board” in connection to a long-running fraud involving suppliers and employees, which the company in December established had cost it €169mn.

That scandal came to light just months after police raided the company in June over a separate case of missing metals worth more than €20mn. The month before, three Aurubis employees died after being directly exposed to a nitrogen leak at its main plant in Hamburg. Aurubis said the three executives were “taking accountability [ . . . ] of the serious cases of fraud and theft at the Hamburg plant and incidents in occupational safety”.

The decision was made during a meeting of the supervisory board, which under German law oversees and appoints the executive board. 

Aurubis added that its supervisory board would, based on the conclusion of the legal review, not pursue compensation for damages from the three dismissed executives “at this time”.

In what the company called a “phased exit”, Arnold will leave the group in February, Verhoeven in June and Harings — who has headed the metal recycler since 2019 — is to step down in September.

This would leave only Inge Höfkens, who heads up Aurubis’s recycling division and joined the executive board last January, among the current top personnel. Aurubis said supervisory board member Markus Kramer, a former executive at chemical group BASF, would join the executive team from March, adding that recruitment for replacements had begun.

In a statement, Harings said he and his team had “accomplished a great deal for Aurubis in difficult times” but added that “Aurubis has been the victim of criminal activities”.

“The main focus now is to steer the company back into calm waters and install an executive board team that enjoys the unequivocal trust of the supervisory board,” he said. Verhoeven and Arnold both declined to comment.

Courtesy: www.ft.com

• Amazon and eBay to Pay 'Fair Share' for E-Waste Recycling
• El Salvador Eyes $3 Trillion Gold Mine Beneath Its Soil
• Scrap Metal Policies Bleed R8.5bn a Year Without Boosting Jobs, Report Reveals
• Data-Driven Landfill Solutions: Sanborn Head Partners with DDMS