Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is at the centre of a criminal investigation in Germany into whether he is turning a blind eye to Nazi-themed content posted on the social network.

Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and its European policy director, Richard Allan, are also under investigation, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel.

Lord Allan is a British life peer and former Liberal Democrat MP who joined Facebook in 2009. All three have been accused by Chan-jo Jun, a Bavarian lawyer, of failing to ensure posts on Facebook containing racist abuse, threats of violence and Holocaust denial are removed.

#In a complaint submitted to the Munich prosecutors office, Mr Jun says he has identified more than 430 offensive posts on Facebook which were reported to the company but never deleted.

Instead, he claims, Facebook turned a blind eye to the material or sent complainants a generic response which allegedly dismissed the posts a "harmless."