Speaking at a press conference the NY and MA attorneys-general stressed the importance of the lawsuit to send a message to other carmakers not to defraud the USA public.
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Last month, VW agreed to a record 14.7-billion payout to try and settle the affair in the United States, but it is still a long way from drawing a line under the scandal. Horn appeared on Capitol Hill in October, telling US lawmakers that the scandal appeared to be limited to a small group of rogue engineers, and that the software in question was developed in Germany, totally out of his “jurisdiction”.
The lawsuits publically identify management officials who knew that many diesel models could not meet clean-air standards without lower their level of driving performance. The suits publicly identified for the first time many of these employees and accused them of “unlawful conduct”.
The lawsuits state that when US regulators were closing in on the diesel scandal in 2015, a senior Volkswagen attorney in Germany allegedly warned fellow employees who
destroyed evidence.
Schneiderman and Healey detailed the case at a Tuesday news conference in New York City.
Regardless of how this latest lawsuit shakes out, the internal emails showcased in the AGs’ complaint shovel additional manure onto a company already struggling to escape from under a heap of bad publicity. “Auto manufacturers that violate our laws will be punished”, Healey tweeted Tuesday after her appearance alongside Schneiderman in NY. “There is no credible evidence to support the allegation regarding Matthias Müller”, Jeannine Ginivan said in an emailed statement.
The Financial Times quotes VW as saying the allegations are “essentially not new” and the company is addressing them. “. It is regrettable that some states have made a decision to sue for environmental claims now”. He became CEO of Volkswagen in September, replacing Martin Winterkorn, who resigned days after the Environmental Protection Agency accused the company of the diesel deception that month.
That led Frank Tuch, then the head of group quality management for Volkswagen, to write in an email to former chief executive Martin Winterkorn in May that “a thorough explanation for the dramatic increase in NOx [nitrous oxide] emissions can not be given to the authorities”, according to the suit. It said it continues to cooperate with the investigations.
For the first time, lawsuits from New York, Maryland, and MA charge Volkswagen’s chief executive, Matthias Müller, of being aware of decisions as far back as 2006 not to build Audi cars with equipment needed to meet US air quality standards. The suit said VW opted to install defeat software instead of larger tanks to save money.
The suits did not state Muller was aware of the cheating.
But the company still faces fines for violating US environmental laws.
The states’ lawsuits follow a nine-month investigation by a coalition of more than 40 states, according to Schneiderman’s office.
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Volkswagen has already admitted as many as 11 million cars have been sold worldwide with software created to cheat emissions tests-called “defeat devices”-and last month the automaker agreed to pay as much as $15 billion to settle claims of fraud in the United States and buy back those diesels with the tainted software from customers”. However, the company still faces possible civil penalties and criminal charges from the U.S. Justice Department. Last week, California rejected its proposed fix plan.
