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VW Details its Defense of Top Managers in Diesel Cheating Scandal
Volkswagen AG claims in a detailed court document that top executives knew nothing about the company’s diesel emission cheating before U.S. regulators revealed the scandal in 2015.
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Volkswagen AG claims in a detailed court document that top executives knew nothing about the company’s diesel emission cheating before U.S. regulators revealed the scandal on Sept. 18, 2015, the Financial Times reports.
VW filed the 329-page account in Germany’s Braunschweig Higher Regional Court. The court is handling a “model case” filed by Frankfurt-based Deka Investment that will be binding for all shareholder-plaintiffs who claim VW management knew about the cheating and deceived them.
VW’s defense insists the company’s leadership had previously been told only that there was a “non-compliance” issue with its diesels. VW says its leadership believed the problem would be relatively easy to fix and might result in a fine of only about $150 million (€122 million), FT says.
In fact, the company has agreed to pay some $25 billion (€20.4 billion) in fines, repairs, vehicle buybacks and environmental remediation covering roughly 555,000 diesels in the U.S. alone. The company also has taken more modest and far cheaper steps to upgrade 10.5 million of the cheater diesels sold elsewhere, including 8.5 million in Europe.
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