And Tuesday two US state attorneys general filed suit seeking additional penalties.
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That harsh summary of what became known as Dieselgate, was given on Tuesday (19 July) by three United States law enforcement chiefs – the attorneys general in the states New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland – who announced they wanted “substantial penalties” from the German industrial giant.
Focusing on its group operating profit before special items, VW said its operating return on sales would come in between 5% and 6% this year.
“Starting in 2008, Volkswagen and Audi, and later Porsche, began installing these defeat devices in several generations of US-market Volkswagen and Audi diesel engines that equipped over a dozen models, including flagship Audi luxury sedans and high-performance Porsche SUVs, with sales eventually totaling over 25,000 vehicles in New York State, 15,000 in Massachusetts, and 13,000 in Maryland before being pulled from sale previous year”, attorneys general for New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland found.
In 2006, Mr Winterkorn’s successor, Matthias Muller, became aware of the defeat device, according to the NY complaint.
Volkswagen Group of America released a statement which said, in part, “The allegations are essentially not new.it is regrettable that some states have made a decision to sue for environmental claims now, despite their prior support of this ongoing federal-state collaborative process”. The suit accuses top executives of engaging in a massive fraud for years related to VW’s cheating. “Just last month, the Volkswagen Supervisory Board recommended a package of bonuses for the Management Board that presided over the cover-up totaling over $70 million, including generous severance pay to Mr. Winterkorn himself”.
Schneiderman’s counterpart from Massachusetts, Maura Healey, said that regardless of any settlement, state environment laws were violated.
Mueller was a project manager at Audi in 2006 when word allegedly reached him and Winterkorn – then CEO of Audi and later VW chief executive – that engineers were having difficulty meeting USA emissions standards, according to the complaints.
The software was later used in other cars as well.
“They fought to prevent new models from being tested, and once tipped off, Volkswagen employees actually undertook to destroy incriminating documents”.
VW tried to cover up the problem through sham recalls that the company knew wouldn’t meet the required standards and then only confessed to the defeat devices “when they knew the regulators had the goods on them”, according to Schneiderman’s statement.
Winterkorn and VW’s former global head of marketing, Christian Klingler, knew by spring 2014 of the existence of defeat devices and “did nothing to prevent both Audi and Volkswagen from repeatedly deceiving regulators”, the NY lawsuit stated.
In June, VW agreed a record 14.7 billion dollar (£11 billion) settlement in America over its diesel emissions scandal which will see owners paid up to 10,000 USA dollars (£7,500) each in compensation.
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VW admitted in September to using the defeat devices, allowing nearly 600,000 vehicles in the U.S.to run on the road while emitting up to 40 times more pollutants than permitted under US law.
