Copper producer Aurubis has named Toralf Haag as its new CEO, completing an overhaul of its board in the wake of a giant raw-materials fraud.
Haag will take over from Roland Harings, after the company’s supervisory board terminated his contract early in January, along with two other executive board members. The move followed Aurubis’s decision to carry out an independent legal probe into a criminal scam that cost the copper producer about €169-million ($184-million) last year.
The fraud was perpetrated by suppliers and complicit employees, and involved valuable scrap raw materials. It followed on from a smaller theft discovered a few months earlier, and both issues have raised uncomfortable questions about the company’s security controls. Operational safety has also been scrutinized following the death of three workers after a nitrogen leak at its Hamburg plant.
Haag joins the company from Voith Group, and has previously worked at Aurubis in the early 2000s. Tim Kurth has also been named chief operating officer of the company’s custom smelting operations. Both will begin their new roles on September 1.
Aurubis shares were trading 4.6% higher at €76.15 by 4:28 p.m. in Frankfurt. Germany’s Manager Magazin speculated that the company’s biggest shareholder, Salzgitter, may seek to increase its influence.