Volkswagen reportedly faces a tax-evasion investigation at home in Germany, as prosecutors explore wider potential charges related to the emissions scandal.
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The new allegations follow the revelations that some of Volkwagen’s cars were emitting more carbon dioxide than officially reported.
The tax probe is centered around five Volkswagen employees. Instead, prosecutors have to investigate the individuals suspected of being responsible.
Volkswagen admitted in September that it installed software in up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide that vastly understated their actual emissions of smog-causing nitrogen oxides, causing the biggest business scandal in Volkswagen’s 78-year history.
German prosecutors are said to be focusing on the discrepancy between real-world Carbon dioxide output and the understated emissions and fuel-consumption ratings that resulted from the cheating, according to a Reuters report. Investigators are determining if Volkswagen employees knowingly provided false information to authorities about those cars and their emissions to qualify those cars for lower tax rates. “That is a good development”.
As Germany’s auto tax is rated according to a vehicle’s fuel consumption, the prosecution is now looking into whether owners of the affected Volkswagen vehicles underpaid on taxes, a matter which the prosecution’s spokesman said was “not small”.
Volkswagen also uses the engine in the Touraeg and Porsche has used it in the Cayenne since 2013.
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Audi estimated the costs of the fix to be in the “mid-double-digit millions”.
