UPDATE: U.S. Indicts Ex-Audi Engineer for Diesel Emission Cheating

The U.S. Dept. of Justice has filed a criminal complaint charging Giovanni Pamio—a former diesel engineering manager at Volkswagen AG’s Audi unit—with conspiracy to rig diesel engines to evade federal emission laws.

The charges come as Reuters reports that prosecutors in Munich say an unidentified Audi employee has been arrested on suspicion of fraud and false advertising related to the emission cheating scandal. The arrest is not related to any U.S. warrants, according to prosecutors.

Pamio, 60, is the eighth former VW group executive charged in a continuing probe by the FBI and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into the VW diesel emission cheating scandal.

One of the others, James Liang, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. Another, Oliver Schmidt, is in custody and awaiting trial. In January U.S. prosecutors charged five other mid-level executives with similar crimes and last month issued international arrest warrants for them through Interpol.

The Justice Dept. complaint says Pamio headed the thermodynamics unit in Audi’s diesel development department in Germany that developed emission control systems for 3.0-liter V-6 Audi diesels between 2006 and 2015.

Pamio and others decided it was impossible to meet U.S. emission limits for nitrogen oxide emissions under VW design constraints, according to the complaint. It says the team developed and implemented software to cheat the NOx emission test. The charges also say Pamio covered up the cheating for years by sending false data to U.S. regulators about the diesels.