The lawsuits, announced Tuesday, allege that numerous employees and executives at Volkswagen knew that diesel vehicles had been equipped with software allowing them to cheat emissions testing, and that after regulators began investigating several employees tried to cover it up by eliminating data about the software.
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On Tuesday, a civil lawsuit brought by the state of NY against the firm alleged that some of the highest officers still at Volkswagen were aware of the difficulty caused by the production of certain vehicles with regards to their high emissions, but chose to overlook them.
They say Muller, then-chief of Audi project management, knew about a decision 10 years ago “to not outfit Audi vehicles with equipment needed to meet American clean-air standards”, the Times said.
After the first known instance of the company rigging diesel engines with software to cheat emissions tests in 1999, VW spent much of the next decade perfecting its so-called defeat devices for use in Europe and then the US, the attorneys general for New York, Maryland and MA said.
The States of NY and MA are taking legal action against Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, alleging the companies knowingly sold over 53,000 illegally polluting cars and SUVs, violating state environmental laws.
VW last September admitted using sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with millions of vehicles worldwide affected.
“The operating result for the Volkswagen group before special items is significantly higher than market expectations for the first half of 2016”, VW said in a statement, sending its shares zooming ahead by more than seven percent on the Frankfurt stock exchange. The actions make allegations about the involvement of VW engineers and executives.
As Healey charged, “This “clean diesel” was nothing more than a dirty cover-up”.
It hasn’t even been a month since Volkswagen agreed to two related settlements – one with the United States and the state of California and one with the Federal Trade Commission. New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Massachusetts’ Department of Environmental Protection and Maryland’s Department of the Environment provided important assistance with the investigation, according to officials.
The complaints maintain that Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi publically ignored findings of West Virginia University, covering-up their cars’ nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions for almost a year-and-a half.
The company still needs to address the same issue on 3.0 liter engines with cheat devices in Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche models cars. The state lawsuits filed today seek additional penalties. The automaker and its affiliates sold 600,000 such cars US-wide.
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The company also faces criminal investigations and shareholder lawsuits worldwide. The lawsuits, which could lead to state fines of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, complicate VW’s efforts to move past the “Dieselgate” scandal that has hurt its business and reputation, and already cost it billions of dollars.
