Volkswagen, which admitted late previous year to equipping 11 million vehicles worldwide with software to cheat emissions tests, has maintained that the deception was limited to a small group of people.
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The deception involved in Volkswagen’s thwarting of diesel emissions tests spanned almost a decade and grew to involve senior executives, New York’s attorney general charged in a civil lawsuit on Tuesday.
Schneiderman was joined by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in a joint news conference in Albany accusing Volkswagen and its affiliates, Audi and Porsche, of knowingly putting the diesel powered vehicles in the showrooms of the three states, promoting them as “clean diesels”, but cheating on the software to make the cars appear to be clean in emissions tests.
When regulators started asking questions, several VW employees destroyed incriminating evidence after they were tipped off by a senior in-house lawyer in Germany and then repeatedly failed to disclose to regulators the true reason for the discrepancies, according to the NY and Maryland complaints.
The three states’ lawsuits followed a nine-month long investigation by a multistate coalition of more than 40 states in which investigators obtained more than a million pages of records.
VW admitted previous year to installing illegal software disguising the level of emissions from its diesel cars.
“Volkswagen continues to work cooperatively with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board on a comprehensive national resolution of all remaining environmental issues arising from the diesel matter”, the company continued.
Volkswagen spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan criticized the states’ decision to file suit and said the company already has agreed to spend billions of dollars to address all environmental harms from the excess emissions.
New York’s Attorney-General called the use of “defeat devices” a “widespread conspiracy” and a “cunningly cynical fraud”.
Maryland is joining NY and MA in a legal action against Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche over diesel emissions cheating.
The New York suit seeks civil penalties up to 0 million.
“This is an example of a company that not only engaged in deception and fraud on a brazen scale but covered up that deception”, Maura Healey, the MA attorney general, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “With today’s action, we want to make clear to all auto manufacturers that violating laws created to protect our environment and our public health is unacceptable and will be punished with significant penalties”.
“We continue to believe that the market is complacent with respect to the amount and speed of change that the VW new management team is now implementing”, said Mr. Ellinghorst said.
The states charged that dozens of VW employees at various levels knew that the company’s “clean diesel” engines could not meet pollution standards in normal driving without compromises to performance or fuel economy.
On Tuesday, the attorneys general of NY and MA claimed that VW’s inability to comply with United States emissions standards had allegedly “reached the attention” of Matthias Mueller, the current Volkswagen CEO, and his predecessor Martin Winterkorn as early as July 2006.
The suits did not state Mueller was aware of the cheating. Prosecutors here and overseas are also looking at possible criminal charges.
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The legal action also claims that former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn and a top executive at Audi knew of the devices by at least spring 2014. The German vehicle manufacturer could end up culpable for billions of dollars in fines.
