Deutsche Bank co-CEO charged in Kirch case

One of Deutsche Bank's co-heads, Juergen Fitschen, has been charged with attempted fraud linked to the bank's long-running legal battle with the Kirch media group, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The prosecutors said in a statement that Fitschen and four others -- ex-CEOs Rolf Breuer and Josef Ackermann and former executives Clemens Boersig and Tessen von Heydebreck -- had all been indicted.
The executives are accused of lying to judges in one of the suits brought by the late media magnate Leo Kirch against the bank in a long-running legal battle.
The accused have been formally notified and now have an opportunity to respond, after which the court will decide whether the case should go ahead, a spokeswoman for the Munich court said.
Leo Kirch, who died aged 84 in 2011, had accused Deutsche Bank of causing the downfall of his media empire in 2002 when the bank's then chief executive, Breuer, publicly questioned the group's creditworthiness in a television interview.
In February, Deutsche Bank announced it would pay nearly one billion euros to settle the case.