The Justice Department said in a statement that Liang has agreed to cooperate with the government in its ongoing VW investigation as part of his plea agreement. That cooperation suggests prosecutors are preparing cases against others at the company.
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Engineer James Robert Liang, 62, is the first person to face criminal charges in connection with the Justice Department’s wide-ranging probe into the company’s manipulation of federal pollution tests.
“I know VW did not disclose the defeat device to USA regulators in order to sell the cars in the US”, said Liang on Friday. The judge noted that he is not a USA citizen and could be subject to immigration action. “That’s what makes me guilty”. He declined to comment later to reporters. A Berlin attorney representing European plaintiffs suing the automaker said that this will certainly affect proceedings in Europe. In 2006, Liang, along with his co-conspirators, began designing the “EA 189” diesel engine to be sold to the U.S. However, after realizing that they couldn’t produce a design that can pass U.S. emissions tests, Liang and his co-conspirators created and deployed the “defeat device”, which is a software that identifies whether the automobile is getting driven normally down a road or undergoing an emissions test. The software detected when the cars were being tested in a lab so that they could pass emissions tests, but once the cars hit real-world conditions, the software circumvented the emissions control system to spew large amounts of nitrogen oxide (NOx) into the atmosphere. The Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] stated that Liang and other employees designed [press release] the engine in 2006 after they were unable to design an engine that met USA emissions standards.
“Mr. Liang certainly knew enough that the USA government has embraced him as its first and certainly a prominent cooperator”, said Frenkel, who added the Liang likely will get little or no prison time due to his cooperation. By cooperating with the government, he could potentially reduce his prison sentence. The deal also requires Mr. Liang to cooperate with German law enforcement.
As an engineer in Germany, Liang helped develop the engines equipped the defeat devices from the earliest stages, said the indictment.
A veteran Volkswagen employee has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the carmaker’s use of so-called “clean diesel” engines that actually cheated on US emissions tests.
Questions about Volkswagen emissions first arose in 2014, when West Virginia University researchers identified discrepancies between what the cars emitted on the road and in testing situations.
Nearly half of all owners affected by the 2.0-liter VW TDI settlement program announced at the end of June have registered, and most are opting to sell their cars back to Volkswagen, Bloomberg. Later, when confronted by regulators, they tried to cover up their actions.
Liang’s indictment also contains excerpts from emails that Liang and other VW employees exchanged as scrutiny from regulators increased in 2015 before the EPA announced VW’s malfeasance in September. In German, that employee wrote: “The key word “creativity’ would be helpful here”.
More on this as we get it. As the head of the Diesel Competence unit in the US, he reported to Germany, prosecutors said.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy on Friday in Detroit federal court.
In June, the company agreed to a separate civil settlement paying regulators and consumers up to $15 billion.
Late last month, VW reached a tentative settlement with 650 dealers worth about $1.2 billion.
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-William Boston contributed to this article.
