DUESSELDORF, 22 January 2004 — Six top German corporate executives asserted their innocence here yesterday at the start of a high-profile trial sparked by big payments to officials of telecommunications giant Mannesmann during a takeover four years ago.

The defendants, including the head of Deutsche Bank Josef Ackermann, said they were confident they would be acquitted at the end of a trial that could last six months.

They denied having broken the law when they approved 111.5 million marks (57 million euros, $71 million) in bonuses to Mannesmann board members during the record-breaking takeover of Mannesmann by British mobile giant Vodafone in 2000.

Deutsche Bank chief Ackermann made a victory “V” sign as he entered Room 111 of the Düsseldorf court, crowded with the camera teams and journalists from far and wide. He said he could not understand why he was in court.

“This must be the only country where those who are successful and who create value have to go to court because of it,” Ackermann said, smiling and visibly relaxed. “That’s why this case is an important one for Germany.”

The case is indeed widely seen as a test of the reputation of corporate Germany as a whole, for it is the first time that business leaders have faced prosecution for their supervisory board activities.

The prosecution argues that the size of the payouts clearly went against the interests of both Mannesmann and its shareholders and were therefore illegal under German share law.

“The accused knew that the bonuses were illegal,” said Johannes Puls when reading the charges.

But the defendants argue that such large payments are common practice in other countries such as the United States and that sanctioning the executives would discourage any brave decision-making in German companies in future.

Ackermann’s co-defendants were similarly adamant they had done no wrong. “I acted perfectly correctly and we’re here to prove it,” said a slightly more tense Klaus Esser, the former chief of telecommunications giant Mannesmann.

He was one of the direct beneficiaries of the big bonuses, pocketing 16.3 million euros during the biggest corporate takeover in German post-war history.

And Mannesmann’s former supervisory board chief, Joachim Funk said the trial would “not only not confirm, but it would disprove” the charges. Ackermann, Funk, the ex-boss of the powerful IG Metall labor union Klaus Zwickel and another former member of the Mannesmann supervisory board, Juergen Ladberg, were in the dock for rubber-stamping the payouts.

They are charged with “breach of trust”, which could theoretically carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years, depending on the degree of culpability. Esser and Mannesmann’s former personnel director Dietmar Droste are charged with aiding and abetting the other four. They could face heavy fines if found guilty.

For many critics, the so-called Mannesmann affair encapsulated the greed of corporate bosses during the high-tech boom at the end of the decade.

Vodafone succeeded in taking over Mannesmann, the former industrial conglomerate-turned-telecommunications group, in February 2000 after months of fierce resistance by Esser and Mannesmann’s management board.

It quickly emerged that Esser and his cronies had been awarded massive payouts, sparking criticism they had been bribed into submission. But Esser and his supporters argue there was nothing indecent with the size of his golden handshake that should be measured against a manager’s success. And Mannesmann’s shares more than doubled during his term in office.

The case was scheduled to continue today with the first hearings of the defendants and Esser promised to prove his innocence in a testimony that could last up to five hours. Ackermann said he would need no more than 40 minutes.

Nevertheless, the court has allotted two days every week for the trial that could last until June.