By CHRISTOPH RAUWALDDaimler AG and Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche were Friday facing a new probe into the death of a company engineer on a test track last year, but Daimler said it expects the company and CEO to be cleared.
A Daimler spokeswoman said the investigation by a German public prosecutors office was "a pure formality." In Germany, a prosecutor is obliged to look at any allegations of serious wrongdoing. A German media report said the new probe was at the request of the dead engineer's family.
"We firmly expect Mr. Zetsche to be cleared from these allegations," the Daimler spokeswoman said. The public prosecutor's office wasn't immediately available for comment.
In July, a separate probe by another prosecutors' office into the same accident ended with a German district court and public prosecutors finding the company and Mr. Zetsche not guilty of any wrongdoing. Instead it found that a driver of one of the vehicles in the accident was solely responsible, a Daimler spokeswoman said.
The Daimler engineer had been sitting in a second vehicle involved in the crash. Mr. Zetsche himself was not involved in the accident but was being probed because he is the CEO of the company.
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