U.S. Charges Ex-VW CEO Winterkorn with Conspiracy in Diesel Scandal

The U.S. grand jury has indicted Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen AG’s CEO during the company’s diesel emission cheating, for conspiracy and wire fraud for perpetrating and covering up the scandal.

Winterkorn joins five other German VW executives who were first charged in 2016. But his name wasn’t revealed at the time to avoid hampering a continuing investigation. That concern has since lifted, according to the U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider.

A superseding indictment filed in mid-March in the U.S. District Court in Detroit charges that Winterkorn was told about VW’s diesel cheating in May 2014 and July 2015 and “agreed with other senior VW executives to continue to perpetrate the fraud.”

The 42-page indictment provides an exhaustive timeline with details of the cheating, beginning in 2006, and describes the role of each of the six executives. The other people indicted are:

• Richard Dorenkamp, former head of VW’s engine development aftertreatment dept.
• Bernd Gottweis, head of VW quality management and product safety
• Jens Hadler, head of VW brand engine development
• Heinz-Jakob Neusser, VW’s head of development
• Juergen Peter, VW’s liaison with regulatory agencies

All five men and Winterkorn are German citizens who are shielded from extradition to the U.S. by the German constitution.

The charges say executives discovered in March 2014 that independent research by West Virginia University uncovered emission discrepancies between VW diesels under test conditions and in real-world driving. The threat of revealing the cheating was described in a memo to Winterkorn in May 2014.

Increasingly suspicious U.S. regulators threatened to not certify VW’s 2016 model diesels without a clear explanation of the anomalies they had found with the company’s 2.0-liter diesels. The indictment says Winterkorn requested an emergency meeting on the issue, which was held in Germany on July 27, 2015.

Presenters used a PowerPoint presentation to detail for Winterkorn how the company was cheating and what it was doing to deflect the concerns of regulators. The indictment says Winterkorn approved a plan to provide “partial disclosures” in an effort to continue fending off regulators.

VW officials were given a script to follow to perpetuate the cover-up, according to the indictment. But a VW employee revealed the cheating to California regulators in August 2015. A VW executive formally admitted the cheating a month later.