MUNICH, Germany, April 19 (UPI) -- Siemens AG supervisory board Chairman Heinrich von Pierer resigned Thursday amid mounting corruption scandals at the German engineering company.
In announcing his resignation, effective Wednesday, von Pierer, 66, who was Siemens' chief executive from 1992 to 2005, denied any personal responsibility for the criminal investigations.
He said he was leaving out of a duty to Siemens and its more than 400,000 employees.
But in a statement he also said he hoped his departure would help take Siemens "out of the headlines" and bring "it back into calmer waters."
The company said in December -- a month after police arrested several Siemens current and former executives in a raid -- that it had uncovered more than $570 million in "suspicious transactions" over the previous seven years.
Prosecutors are investigating reports Siemens communications employees bribed potential customers abroad with hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as reports Siemens sought to undermine a powerful industrial union and violated the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Board member Gerhard Cromme, who heads the board's powerful audit committee overseeing an internal investigation into the alleged corruption, will be nominated to replace von Pierer at least temporarily, Siemens said.
