Ferdinand Piech looks to cut ties with family holding company that controls VW

Two years ago, Ferdinand Piech, then chairman of the Volkswagen Group, resigned from his post following a public spat with Martin Wintekorn, who was the automaker’s CEO at the time.

The 79-year-old is now seeking to cut remaining ties with the automaker by offloading his considerable stake in Porsche Automobil Holding, the holding company that controls the VW Group via a 52 percent stake of the automaker’s voting shares.

Piech’s stake is roughly 15 percent of Porsche Automobil Holding, valued at approximately 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).

The holding company released the statement on Friday that Piech is looking to sell “the major part” of his stake to other members of the Porsche and Piech families, Bloomberg reports. The families, the descendants of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche, own 100 percent of the shares of the holding company.

Piech resigned from the VW Group only months before the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal went public. Since then, he’s remained quiet on the topic, only coming out in February with allegations that senior staff, including Winterkorn, who stepped down immediately after the scandal went public, knew about the issues months before admitting knowledge of it.

Although the scandal is coming to a close in the United States, with the automaker this month pleading guilty to three felony charges, several VW Group executives are still being investigated by the Justice Department, including one, Oliver Schmidt, who is currently in jail and due in court on April 18 to face as many as 11 felony charges.

Furthermore, the VW Group is also still facing investigations in other countries, including in its home of Germany. Only last week, German investigators raided some of the automaker’s offices included those of current CEO Matthias Müller and Audi CEO Rupert Stadler.