Aurubis fraud case could take down top executives

Aurubis AG says The supervisory board of Aurubis AG is in the process of “advanced talks" with three members of the board of management regarding the termination of their executive board activities.”

“Subject to the discussion and resolution of the full supervisory board scheduled for Jan. 23, 2024, [CEO] Roland Harings would leave the executive board on Sept. 30, 2024, [Chief Financial Officer] Rainer Verhoeven on June 30, 2024, and [Chief Operating Officer] Dr. Heiko Arnold on Feb. 29, 2024," the Germany-based company says.

Aurubis also could move Markus Kramer, a longtime former BASF executive, from the supervisory board to the executive board.

Regarding Harings and the other two executives, Aurubis says until they depart, the three would continue to perform their respective duties.

The Aurubis supervisory board met in mid-December of last year and at that time in part “discussed executive board matters in detail.”

Under the current leadership team, the company has made a major copper recycling investment at a campus near Augusta, Georgia, that represents one of several projects poised to produce a rebound in the consumption of copper scrap in the United States.

However, last September, Aurubis was the victim of a sizable recycling-related fraud scheme. Later that same month, the metals company revised its fourth-quarter and overall fiscal year 2022-2023 guidance downward by about 33 percent.

About four months on, as an investigation into the fraud case continues, BloombergLaw.com reports some members of the supervisory board are seeking to “move on” from the incident and make leadership changes while doing so.

The rumored changes could mean an investigation commissioned by the Aurubis supervisory board is nearing its end. That investigation, being conducted by German law firm Hengeler Mueller, examines “the responsibility of the executive board in context with the known criminal offenses to the detriment of the company.”

“Currently the supervisory board can neither rule out that the acting members of the executive board remain in office unchanged, nor that one or more members of the executive board terminate their office early or that the executive board is restructured respectively," Aurubis says.