The diesel scandal is gradually being forgotten, even though deception and fraud surrounding emissions levels have thrown the entire auto industry into disarray in this country. A good nine years after it became known that VW had the engine control system manipulated to ensure good emissions values, this scandal is catching up with a number of top managers at the supplier Continental. It involves a three-digit million sum that the company is demanding back from those who violate their obligations have. This is intended to offset the costs incurred by Continental. This includes the fine of 100 million euros that the Hanover public prosecutor’s office issued against Continental last year for negligent breaches of supervisory duties in connection with the engine control and the associated software. There are also costs for lawyers and experts who investigated the diesel scandal internally also cost many millions of euros. Continental doesn’t want to say how many. The “Handelsblatt” first reported on the case and mentioned a sum of around 150 million euros, which a Continental spokesman did not want to comment on. “Continental has suffered considerable damage as a result.” The affected executives are unlikely to have a direct impact on their wallets . There is manager liability insurance against such claims due to breach of duty, which at least covers cases where the facts are not criminally relevant. “Continental has suffered considerable damage as a result,” says a statement from the company based in Hanover, which is likely to demand repayment of the damage caused because the shareholders could insist on it. The fact that the emissions scandal in the case of Continental is only being dealt with so late is While the market leader Bosch was already fined 90 million euros in 2019, this is due to the inadequate internal processing. An initial report from the Noerr law firm was apparently incomplete. “Decisive information was withheld from the supervisory board during the initial clarification,” says Continental. Only a second report showed the relevant breaches of duty, and these were consistent with the public prosecutor’s investigations. With this, Continental also subsequently justifies the personnel consequences that were drawn in the course of the investigation: “The results of the investigation have confirmed that all of these measures were correct.”More on the subjectThe case is not yet over under criminal law. At the beginning of December, the Hanover public prosecutor’s office brought charges against former CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann for aiding and abetting fraud. Based on an email from 2008, there is a suspicion that he himself may have had evidence of manipulation of emissions values back then. Until the diesel scandal at VW came to light in September 2015, according to investigations by the public prosecutor’s office, around three million VW cars had been sold with engine controls that had been manipulated to improve emissions levels. For some other top Continental managers, however, the fear of a criminal trial was apparently already imminent Christmas is over. The “Wirtschaftswoche”, citing the Hanover public prosecutor’s office, reported that proceedings against three former board members and three other former senior employees on suspicion of breach of trust or aiding and abetting had been discontinued because there was no sufficient suspicion of the crime.
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