Volkswagen executive pleads guilty in case

DETROIT — A Volkswagen executive pleaded guilty on Friday to federal charges arising from a continuing investigation into the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal.

The charges against the executive, Oliver Schmidt, stem from his role in Volkswagen’s decade-long scheme to rig diesel cars with devices that circumvented federal emissions tests.

Schmidt, 48, the former head of Volkswagen’s environmental and engineering center in Michigan, had been facing three charges since his arrest in January.

He has been held without bond in prison pending trial. But last week his lawyers told a federal judge here that Schmidt had decided to enter a guilty plea.

Under a revision of the charges, he pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy to defraud the federal government and violating the Clean Air Act. A third charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud was rolled into the conspiracy charge.

Schmidt admitted conspiring with other Volkswagen employees to mislead and defraud the United States in 2015 by failing to disclose that thousands of diesel cars were rigged to evade detection of excessive emissions levels. He also admitted filing fraudulent emissions reports to regulators.

Schmidt faces maximum penalties of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge, and two years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the environmental charge. He is to be sentenced Dec. 6.

Volkswagen has already pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act, customs violations and obstruction of justice.

The company agreed to pay $4.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties in the case brought by the Justice Department. The penalties were part of $22 billion in settlements and fines that Volkswagen is paying in connection with the cheating scandal and the sale of vehicles that emit harmful levels of pollution.

Schmidt was a key player in Volkswagen’s efforts to deceive regulators in the United States about the company’s compliance with federal emissions rules. He acted as a liaison to federal and California regulators during a period when, according to the authorities, Volkswagen was engaged in an orchestrated attempt to conceal the emissions fraud.