V In the diesel affair, olkswagen has agreed to a further settlement with plaintiffs in the United States. The German carmaker pays the state of Maryland together with its daughters Audi and Porsche up to 33.5 million dollars (27.5 million euros) for manipulated exhaust emissions, as Attorney General Brian Frosh on Thursday morning German time in Baltimore announced.
However, $ 4.5 million of this will only be payable if, over the next five years, companies do not use a state-owned port for part of their logistics, thereby boosting the local economy.
The automakers had cheated thousands of consumers in Maryland and massively polluted the air, said prosecutor Frosh. The comparison shows that polluters paid a high price in his state.
VW described the agreement as an important step forward in resolving the remaining regional US environmental claims in the context of the “diesel issue”. The auto giant has already posted legal costs of more than € 25 billion for settlements with plaintiffs in North America as part of the emissions scandal uncovered by the US Environmental Protection Agency in September 2015.