Indian Court Issues Arrest Warrant Against Porsche Board

Yes, the Jaipur court has issued arrest warrants against the Porsche CEO and eight board members for cheating. Porsche entered India a few years ago, appointing Precision Cars as their official importer. The local company made investments in 7 dealerships over the course of time and suddenly Volkswagen appointed itself as the new importer, thereby abruptly ending Precision Cars’ contract. According to media reports, likely sourced from lawyers, the German car maker did not give any prior notice  and neither parties were able to come to a conclusion since April 2012. Precision Cars says it got in touch with Porsche several times but received no response from them. Precision Cars wants to see Porsche managers in handcuffs and a cell.

Precision Cars filled a case which accuses Porsche of cheating, dishonesty, extortion, criminal conspiracy and breach of trust. That is quite a few charges indeed. The Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) even contacted Interpol to help them put the Porsche management under arrest. Porsche has responded saying the charges against them are “baseless and without any material substance,” and they have faith in the Indian judiciary system to do justice. Says a missive from Zuffenhausen:

“Both the learned Trial Court and the Honourable High Court of Rajasthan at Jaipur have upheld Porsche’s termination of the importer agreement and a subsequent appeal by the former importer to the Honourable Supreme Court of India was also dismissed. With one exception the former importer has exhausted all rights of appeal and the civil litigation is now at an end.”

Porsche managers don’t seem to be worried about impending arrest, but might route their travels around India for a while. Says the statement:

“The filing of criminal proceeding is an afterthought and just an attempt by the former importer to open a new – in the view of Porsche’s local lawyers inherently frivolous – proceeding against Porsche. According to Porsche’s local lawyers said bailable warrants are effectively a form of summons which provides the named individuals with the chance to answer the allegations made in front of the court.

Precision Cars promptly fired back a statement of their own, beginning with:

“It is surprising to see Porsche say they have high regard for Indian judiciary and calling all allegations baseless in the same statement. The arrest warrants have been issued after the Court followed the due process and found the charges worthy of issuing a warrant.”

Both parties have much more to say. However, TTAC is not the court, and we recommend to make the proper filings there.

Faisal Ali Khan is the editor of MotorBeam.com, a website covering the automobile industry of India.