VW Diesel Scandal Creeps Closer to Top Management

Internal emails and other communications at Volkswagen AG imply that high-level VW executives knew of the company’s efforts to develop and implement cheater software to sidestep emission tests, The New York Times says.

The newspaper cites documents that, among other things, indicated that engineers working on the software repeatedly sought approval from top managers to deploy the software. Earlier reports say VW decided to cheat because of the high costs of meeting limits for nitrogen oxides emissions.

The Times says the issue of U.S. regulations for diesels was the main agenda for a VW meeting in 2007 that was attended by Martin Winterkorn, VW’s CEO at the time, and Matthias Mueller, the company’s current CEO and then-head of product planning. The meeting included a detailed description of the software, according to the newspaper.

But VW insists there is no evidence that Mueller or Winterkorn saw the presentation. An internal summary of the meeting makes no reference to the illegal software.