VW said the company and Poetsch, who was finance chief of Volkswagen from 2003 until he became chairman in October 2015, would fully support the prosecutor's office in its investigation. The prosecutor's office in Braunschweig was not immediately available for comment.The Porsche and Piech families that control Volkswagen through their holding company Porsche SE, of which Poetsch is CEO, said on Sunday they backed the manager and shared VW's view that he had complied with capital market rules.The German state of Lower Saxony, VW's second biggest shareholder with 20 percent of voting rights, said it was up to the prosecution and the courts to assess what had happened, adding Poetsch should be assumed to be innocent pending the completion of the investigation. CHEATING SOFTWARE Sunday's Bild am Sonntag report said the California Air Resources Board (CARB) had made a new discovery of cheating software in an automatic transmission Audi in summer 2016. CARB has declined to comment on the report.