On Monday, VW shares rose 4.2 percent to their highest since September 2015 on optimism about the expected USA criminal settlement, topping the German blue-chip.
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And a Volkswagen executive was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier in January for his alleged role in emissions cheating and attempts to cover it up. Volkswagen pressed to resolve investigations and lawsuits as quickly as possible, while working to fix its reputation with auto buyers and dealers.
Volkswagen Group sold roughly 590,000 four- and six- cylinder diesel vehicles over the past decade equipped with software – called defeat devices – created to cheat emissions tests.
The automaker has also been ordered to pay a whopping $4.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties – an amount Lynch called “one of the largest clean air penalties ever achieved”.
The government and Volkswagen have been trying to reach a settlement by January 20 before Donald Trump is sworn into office and numerous people who have been overseeing the case step down.
Separately, Lynch said Volkswagen had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, to commit wire fraud and to violate the American pollution laws. Schmidt, a former emissions compliance executive for VW Group, is the only executive now in the US-he was arrested over the weekend by the FBI on charges that he knew about the cheating software and lied to federal regulators about it.
She also said the size of the penalty, the largest ever for a vehicle company in U.S. history, reflects the unusual level of premeditation of wrongdoing at high levels of Volkswagen.
“Volkswagen’s attempts to dodge emissions standards and import falsely certified vehicles into the country represent an egregious violation of our nation’s environmental, consumer protection and financial laws”, U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement Wednesday.
It will pay $2.8bn in criminal fines, and $1.5bn in civil fines, in addition to $17.5bn already agreed in settlements with vehicle owners, dealers and for environmental cleanup. The plea deal will need the approval of a US judge.
Regulators confronted VW employees about the use of the software in the summer of 2015.
The Volkswagen emissions scandal. US authorities have traveled to Germany to arrange interviews with managers and seek cooperation.
“VW’s admission of guilt struck analysts as both a sign of the strength of the government’s case and the fastest route for an automaker trying to escape damaging headlines that have poured out for more than a year, since the scandal broke”, the Post reported.
The six VW executives believed to be in Germany were identified as Heinz-Jakob Neusser, Jens Hadler, Richard Dorenkamp, Bernd Gottweis and Jurgen Peter.
Schmidt’s arrest and the announcement of the settlement come against the backdrop of US prosecutors preparing charges against other senior executives of the automaker, according to reports filed by Bloomberg financial news.
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The EPA says the emissions scandal included Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche models with 2.0- and 3.0-liter diesel engines that were released from model years 2009 to 2016.
