BERLIN, June 4 (RAPSI, Semyon Nekhoroshkin) - A criminal court in Stuttgart, Germany, on Tuesday sentenced Holger Haerter, former CFO of German luxury carmaker Porsche Holding, to a EUR 630,000 fine for a loan fraud.

The court states on its website that the issue concerns a syndicated multibillion loan which Porsche SE took out in March 2009 to finance the acquisition of a larger rival, Volkswagen. The court ruled that Harter provided misleading information about the concern's financial risks and requirements to a bank which planned to lend it EUR 500 million.

The media claim that the bank in question is French lender BNP Paribas.

Haerter is to pay 180 daily installments of EUR 3,500 or EUR 630,000 in total, the amount he received for 180 days of working at Porsche. There was one other defendant in the case, an accomplice of Haerter. He has been fined EUR 63,000.

In December last year, former Porsche Chief Executive Wendelin Wiedeking and Haerter were charged with providing false information about VW shares during loan refinancing talks in 2009. Porsche owned a stake in VW, and those named in the case were authorized to deal with the company's financial issues.

The Stuttgart prosecutor's office previously said that the charges were based on Porsche's failed attempt to buy a larger stake in VW in 2008. Wiedeking and Haerter planned to buy Volkswagen, but Porsche ultimately became part of VW. Investors now accuse the former Porsche executives of deceiving them while trying to take control of VW.

Porsche and VW agreed to combine in August 2009 and planned a full merger, after Porsche failed with its hostile bid for VW. The Stuttgart probe and investor lawsuits prompted VW to consider alternatives to the 2009 agreement, under which the merger was to be completed by the end of 2011.