FRANKFURT — German prosecutors filed criminal charges on Tuesday against the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank, Jürgen Fitschen, and several former bank leaders, accusing them of colluding to give false testimony in a long-running lawsuit over the collapse of a bank client’s media empire.
The prosecutors continued to investigate the executives after the bank in February settled more than a decade of litigation with the family of Leo Kirch over the downfall of the Kirch Group and its subsidiaries. Mr. Kirch had sued the bank after an appearance by Rolf E. Breuer, the bank’s former chief executive, on Bloomberg Television in February 2002, in which he commented on the media company’s creditworthiness.
The Munich prosecutor’s office filed charges of attempted trial fraud against Mr. Fitschen, the current co-chief executive, as well as Mr. Breuer and Josef Ackermann, who was also a chief executive of the bank. Charges were also filed against Clemens Börsig, former supervisory board chairman of the bank, and Tessen von Heydebreck, a former member of the management board.
The charges, which must be approved by a court to go forward, add to the already formidable list of legal problems that have damaged Deutsche Bank’s reputation and led to billions of euros in litigation costs. Among the most serious cases, bank employees are suspected of manipulating foreign currency markets and benchmark interest rates.
Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, said in a statement that the charge against Mr. Fitschen was unfounded, but declined to comment further or to say whether he would remain in his post. Mr. Fitschen shares chief executive duties with Anshu Jain, who was not named in the case.
The bank had previously disclosed that Mr. Fitschen was the target of an investigation in relation to the Kirch case.
Mr. Fitschen is not the first Deutsche Bank chief executive to face criminal charges while in office. His predecessor, Mr. Ackermann, was tried on accusations that he was involved in awarding illegal bonuses to managers of Mannesmann, a German cell phone service provider, after its takeover by Vodafone of Britain in 2000.
The charges were dismissed in 2006 after Mr. Ackermann agreed to pay 3.2 million euros, or about $4.2 million, of his own money. Mr. Ackermann continued to lead the bank during legal proceedings in the Mannesmann case.
But the charges against Mr. Fitschen are an embarrassment when the bank is in the midst of what it has billed as a sweeping campaign to instill a stronger sense of ethics among bank employees and avoid the problems of the past.
“I would say the impact on the bank’s reputation would be very
serious,” Lei Mao, assistant professor of finance at Warwick Business
School in Britain, said in an e-mail.
While it is too early to call on Mr. Fitschen to resign, Mr. Mao said,
Deutsche Bank should accelerate its drive to improve bank culture at
all costs. That might include “getting rid of a co-chief executive,”
he said.
Eberhard Kempf, a lawyer for Mr. Ackermann — who served as chief executive of Deutsche Bank for a decade until 2012 — declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Breuer, who was Mr. Ackermann’s predecessor, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Lawyers for Mr. Börsig and for Mr. von Heydebreck could not be reached.
Deutsche Bank shares fell about 1 percent in Frankfurt trading Tuesday.
The charges, which had been rumored in the German news media for weeks, stem from the lawsuit filed against the bank by Mr. Kirch, a media mogul who blamed Deutsche Bank for the collapse of his Munich-based television and film rights empire.
Legal proceedings continued past Mr. Kirch’s death in 2011, concluding only after Deutsche Bank agreed in February of this year to pay €775 million in a settlement. The bank also agreed to pay interest and costs.
In a statement on Tuesday, Munich prosecutors said that the accused men had colluded to make false statements before the Munich court that was hearing the Kirch lawsuits. After judges in the case said in 2011 that they believed Mr. Breuer had not told them the truth, according to prosecutors, the other accused men offered testimony intended to bolster Mr. Breuer’s version of events.
The prosecutors did not specify what statements Mr. Breuer made, but according to the German news media, they concerned the accusation by Mr. Kirch that Deutsche Bank wanted to put pressure on the media company in order to earn fees if it were sold.
In Mr. Fitschen’s case, according to prosecutors, he gave testimony intended to support Mr. Breuer while also avoiding statements that could be proven false. In addition, after bank documents came to light contradicting previous testimony, prosecutors claim, Mr. Fitschen and Mr. Ackermann did not try to correct the record.
If convicted, the men could face prison sentences of six months to 10 years. Mr. Börsig and Mr. von Heydebreck face additional charges of making false statements under oath, which carries a possible sentence of three months to five years.
Because a court must approve the charges for them to go forward, the defendants will have an opportunity to argue for the charges to be dropped. None of the defendants would face pretrial detention unless a judge ruled that they might flee or commit further crimes, such as tampering with witnesses or evidence.