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Berlin prosecutors have dropped a criminal investigation into a former top executive at SAP, Europe’s largest technology group, after he agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to end a probe into an allegation of sexual harassment at a company event.
The investigation against Jürgen Müller, who stepped down from his role as chief technology officer in September, “concluded with a case dismissal subject to a payment”, Müller’s lawyer Daniel Krause told the Financial Times on Wednesday.
Krause said the investigation related to “one alleged case of harassment”, adding that “no further accusations were ever made against my client”.
He declined to give details of the amount of the payment or the recipient.
In minor criminal cases, German prosecutors can close an investigation if the accused agrees to make a payment and a court approves the arrangement. Under the process, the suspect pays money to a charity or the state treasury without admitting guilt and retains a clean criminal record.
In an SAP press release announcing Müller’s departure in September, he apologised for “inappropriate” behaviour at a company event.
Prosecutors in Heidelberg, where SAP’s headquarters is, said that month that they had started to investigate “a former executive of a large software company on initial suspicion of sexual harassment”.
The investigation was later taken over by prosecutors in Berlin, where the event in question took place. Berlin’s prosecutor’s office declined to comment. SAP and Müller declined to comment.
Müller’s unexpected exit from SAP, which has a market capitalisation of about €328bn, followed the departure of two other board members a month earlier: chief revenue officer Scott Russell and chief marketing officer Julia White. Their exits were not related to the allegations against Müller.
On Tuesday, SAP announced a boardroom reshuffle, promoting former Boston Consulting Group partner Sebastian Steinhäuser as chief of strategy and operations to the executive board.
Despite the upheaval, SAP’s shares have risen by more than 60 per cent over the past year as the rival of Oracle and Salesforce transforms its business model from selling software licences to focus on cloud subscription services.
On Tuesday, SAP named Philipp Herzig, who is currently responsible for its artificial intelligence strategy, as the new chief technical officer. Unlike Müller, he will not join the executive board and will instead be part of a newly formed “extended board”, which is advising the executive board led by chief executive Christian Klein.
On Wednesday, Müller wrote on LinkedIn that he was “proud to see exceptional leaders following in my footsteps”, and that he would “explore new ways of applying technology to help organisations and people” after “taking some time off”.
It came after the company published its annual results on Tuesday, announcing that operating profits grew 26 per cent in 2024 at constant currencies compared with 2023.
The company raised its forecast operating profit for 2025 following an increase of 40 per cent in the backlog of orders for its cloud computing business.
