Six VW execs charged in emission scandal
US OFFICIALS charged six executives at German carmaker Volkswagen on Wednesday in connection with the company’s scheme to deliberately deceive US regulators about the emissions standards of its diesel- engine vehicles and sell those cars illegally to American drivers.
Five of the six executives, at least some of whom were described as high-ranking, are currently in Germany.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said it was too soon to say how that will affect legal proceedings moving forward. The sixth executive was arrested and charged in Miami earlier this week.
Additional executives at the company are being investigated and could face charges, Lynch said.
Volkswagen has agreed to plead guilty to three criminal counts, a rare admission of wrongdoing for a major company, and pay US$ 4.3 billion ( RM19.3 billion) in criminal and civil fines in a settlement with the Justice Department.
“As you all know we cannot put companies in jail, but we can hold their employees personally accountable and we can force companies to pay hefty fines,” said FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“This is really a reflection of the fact that faceless multinational corporations don’t commit crimes, flesh-and-blood people commit crimes,” added Sally Yates, deputy attorney general.
“And we’ve sharpened our focus to ensure that we’re doing everything from the very beginning of an investigation . . . to hold those individuals accountable and build out from there.”
GM and Toyota both incurred steep fines from the Justice Department in recent years
As you all know we cannot put companies in jail, but we can hold their employees personally accountable and we can force companies to pay hefty fines.
Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director
that were connected to safety defects that caused human fatalities. Neither company faced criminal charges or admitted to wrongdoing. Officials said on Wednesday that the Volkswagen case stood out because the deception lasted 10 years and involved senior managers.
“This is a company where lower-level people actually expressed concern along the way about the fact that these defeat devices were being used and questioned whether they should be used, and higher-up people decided to keep using them,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.
“We don’t really see many major multinational corporations that decide at a very high level . . . to violate US law in a systematic way for nearly a decade,” she added.
The six executives face charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and American consumers and violation of the US Clean Air Act. Those indicted include Heinz- Jakob Neusser, 56, Jens Hadler, 50, Richard Dorenkamp, 68, Bernd Gottweis, 69, Oliver Schmidt, 48, and Jurgen Peter, 59, all of Germany. Schmidt was arrested and charged this week in Miami.
All of the accused have ties to Volkswagen’s engine development and quality assurance divisions, both in the United States and Germany. According to the Justice Department, Hadler and Dorenkamp directed employees to develop and install the technology to evade emissions testing. The accused then marketed the car engines as “clean diesel” knowing that they did not meet US standards. Peter also served as one of Volkswagen’s liaisons with regulators in 2015.
A spokesman for Volkswagen declined to disclose the employment status of the six indicted individuals, citing a policy not to discuss ongoing investigations or personnel matters.
Hans Dieter Putsch, who chairs the company’s supervisory board, said in a statement: “When the diesel matter became public, we promised that we would get to the bottom of it and find out how it happened - comprehensively and objectively. . . . We are no longer the same company we were 16 months ago.”
Indeed, Volkswagen shed several top executives and implemented other internal changes after the emission scandal came to light. The company also apologised to US lawmakers and pledged to regain the trust of American consumers. The Justice Department said those actions helped the company avoid even steeper penalties.
A judge must now approve the settlement before it’s made official. That court date has not been set, a Justice Department spokesman said.
“Today’s settlement provides a textbook case about how the Justice Department should address egregious wrongdoing by corporations,” said David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor who served as head of the agency’s environmental crimes section from 2000 to 2007. “Too often, justice comes up short in corporate crime prosecution but not in the VW case.”