Report: VW Employees Were Encouraged to Destroy Diesel Data

A German prosecutor confirms media report indicating a member of Volkswagen AG’s legal department encouraged employees to destroy or remove incriminating data about the company’s diesel emission cheating.

German media reports say the incidents occurred a few weeks before U.S. regulatory authorities revealed that VW had rigged diesel engines to evade pollution standards. If proven, the charge would show that senior VW managers were aware of the cheating, thereby deepening the company’s legal exposure in the scandal.

The German prosecutor, Klaus Ziehe, tells The Wall Street Journal that employees transferred much of the data to thumb drives before deleting it from VW’s data banks. He says most of that information has since been recovered.

The investigation comes three months after Daniel Donovan, a former employee at VW’s data center in suburban Detroit, filed a lawsuit in Michigan that alleges he was ordered to delete incriminating files. He claims he resisted the directive, which came after the U.S. Dept. of Justice ordered the company to halt data deletions.

The complaint says Donovan was fired because managers thought he might report his observations to legal authorities. VW says he was released for other reasons.