The former chief executive of Mannesmann, Mr Klaus Esser, has said he was "slandered and insulted" by German prosecutors who have "made up" charges that he profited illegally from the sale of the company to Vodafone four years ago.
Mr Esser spoke for four hours yesterday in a Düsseldorf courtroom on the second day of the so-called "Mannesmann Trial" in which Mr Esser and five former directors have been called to account for €57 million in bonuses paid after they agreed to Vodafone's hostile takeover bid.
"From my point of view, the course of negotiations at the time was never even near a suspicion of breach of trust," said Mr Esser, saying he was the victim of "huge premature condemnation".
He denied charges that the payments made to him and the board caused any damage to the company or the shareholders. On the contrary, the decision to accept Vodafone's offer after a three-month fight was a "unique success story" that had resulted in a "huge profit" for shareholders, he said.
Mr Esser was the last of the "Mannesmann Six" to take the stand yesterday. Earlier in the day, Deutsche Bank chief executive Mr Josef Ackermann said he acted correctly at all times during the takeover battle.
"I don't know where, criminally speaking, the problem is," said Mr Ackermann, a former director who did not receive any of the €57 million bonuses. The Swiss-born banker said "only in Germany" would such bonuses lead to legal proceedings.
He defended the €29 million paid to Mr Esser, pointing out that Mannesmann's worth had increased tenfold in value under Mr Esser at a time when the Frankfurt DAX index of shares increased by 190 per cent.
Mr Esser's bonus was worth only 0.01 per cent of that increase in value, said Mr Ackermann.
"Should we have told him: 'The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go'?" he asked, quoting German poet Friedrich Schiller.
Mr Joachim Funk, the former head of the board of Mannesmann, said the controversial payments were "legally completely in order".
"Some decisions were taken in haste, the situation was comparable to a battlefield," he said.
Also testifying yesterday was Mr Klaus Zwickel, another former director and the former head of the IG Metall steel-work and engineering union.
He said that, after 50 years of work, he could imagine many things "but never that I could one day be charged with breach of trust", he said.
"I have agreed many compromises in my life but I have never been bought off."
The trial could be most damaging for Mr Ackermann, although the board of Germany's largest financial institution has until now giving their chief executive its full backing.
