The indictment was pronounced by a Michigan grand jury. On Thursday, the US Department of Justice announced the launch of lawsuits against four executives of Audi in the context of the sprawling survey of faked diesel engines to falsify their polluting emissions.
Richard Bauder, Axel Eiser, Stefan Knirsch and Carsten Nagel have been, for some since 2002, responsible for the engine development division at Audi in Germany, say the US authorities. None of them were detained. They are all four in Germany, which does not extradite its nationals to countries outside the European Union.
Thirteen indictments in the Volkswagen Group
With Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio, a head of the administrative team, “they have agreed to fool US regulators and customers by installing software specifically designed to cheat the emission tests of tens of thousands of Audi cars,” lambasted the Department of Justice. The models concerned are the Audi Q7, the Audi A6 Quattro, the Audi A7, the Audi A8L and the Audi Q5.
These new charges bring to thirteen the number of officials of Volkswagen, Audi’s parent company, sued in the United States under the dieselgate, which has already cost nearly thirty billion dollars in fines and compensation to the giant German.
Rupert Stadler, CEO of Audi from 2007 to October 2018, was detained in Germany on 18 June on suspicion of “fraud” and complicity in “issuing false certificates” on the polluting gases of vehicles sold by the four-ring brand. A regional court in Munich decided in late October to release him under judicial supervision.
In September 2015, VW acknowledged that it had distorted the pollutant testing of its diesel vehicles in the United States, triggering the biggest crisis in the company’s history and leading to a regulatory challenge throughout the automotive sector. .
Audi admitted in November 2015, two months after its parent company, have also distorted tests of emissions of its diesel engines in the United States. In October, the builder has agreed to pay a fine of 800 million euros inflicted in Germany by the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.
AFP sources, Reuters