FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s federal prosecutors office has taken over the investigation into an arson attack that has cut power supplies to Tesla’s German plant near Berlin, looking into charges of terrorism.
Tesla’s plant in Gruenheide has been down since March 5 after far-left extremists carried out an arson attack on a near-by power pylon that caused the factory’s power supply to be disrupted until at least the end of next week.
The prosecutors office, whose remit includes terrorism, espionage and international law, said in a statement it was acting “on initial suspicion of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, anti-constitutional sabotage as well as conspiracy to commit arson”.
The attack has left the site’s 12,500 employees in limbo and is costing the U.S. carmaker around 1,000 vehicles a week it cannot produce, resulting in losses that are expected to be at least several hundreds of millions of euros.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Christoph Steitz, Editing by Louise Heavens)