Ex-managers at Europe's biggest chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG accepted kickbacks for fixing sports sponsorship deals with a public relations agency, Munich's state prosecutor said on Monday. The head of Infineon's core memory-chip unit, Andreas von Zitzewitz, resigned over the weekend after the German company said he was under investigation in connection with payments made for motor sports sponsoring contracts, Reuters reported. "After a careful assessment of the results of our investigations so far, the suspicion that payments were made has been confirmed," the prosecutor said in a statement. The Munich prosecutor said von Zitzewitz was suspected of accepting total kickbacks of 259,000 euros ($313,000). Another ex-Infineon manager, Harald Eggers, and the president of Swiss PR firm BF Consulting are also under investigation, the Munich prosecutor said. Von Zitzewitz's was the second resignation of a senior German executive over corruption allegations within the space of a few weeks. Volkswagen AG's personnel chief Peter Hartz stepped down last month, taking the blame for irregularities among his staff. --more 2351 Local Time 2051 GMT
