Diesel investigation
The Hanover public prosecutor’s office is expanding the group of accused Continental employees.
(Photo: dpa)
Düsseldorf After further searches at two Continental locations, the Hanover public prosecutor’s office increased the number of suspects in the ongoing diesel investigations against the supplier. Because of the suspicion of aiding and abetting fraud, the authorities are now investigating 41 and no longer just nine active and former Continental employees.
The spokesman for the Hanover public prosecutor’s office confirmed the expansion of the investigation to the Handelsblatt. “During the first two searches, we secured extensive data. This gave rise to further suspicions, including against other people. Therefore, additional Continental employees are now accused, ”said Oliver Eisenhauer.
In addition to the 41 accused, the public prosecutor’s office also investigated eight other victims for breaches of duty of supervision. Associated with this is an administrative offense against the company itself. First, the “Wirtschaftswoche” reported on the expansion of the investigation.
The number of suspects at Continental is very large compared to other diesel investigations in the automotive industry. Only at Volkswagen do the public prosecutors have more suspicious people in their sights. Around 50 engineers and managers are on the list in Braunschweig, and the first charges have been written.
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At the VW subsidiary Audi there are just under 30. The first criminal proceedings have already begun, including the former CEO Rupert Stadler sitting in the dock. Seven employees are accused of the sports car subsidiary Porsche, the investigations at Daimler, Fiat and individual suppliers are of a similar magnitude.
The suspicion of aiding and abetting fraud and false certification relates to the programming of a prohibited defeat device in the Volkswagen Group’s EA 189 diesel engine. VW produced around three million of these engines between 2009 and 2015. Continental supplied the car company with high-pressure pumps, injectors and the engine management system.
The suspects are accused of having been involved in the diesel manipulation of Volkswagen. At the request of the car manufacturer, they programmed a so-called driving curve recognition. This software recognizes when a vehicle is on a roll test stand.
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that this test stand detection with the knowledge of the Conti engineers could have been misused to manipulate exhaust emissions. Continental contradicts this suspicion. The company announced that the company did not deliver software to any of its customers for the purpose of manipulating exhaust gas values.
Continental is not only holding the investigations against its managers in suspense. The supplier also faces considerable financial burdens. This is shown by the sanctions that other public prosecutors have so far imposed in the Diesel affair. Bosch got off relatively lightly with the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office with 90 million euros, as did ZF. The Friedrichshafen company had to pay 42.5 million euros due to negligent violation of the duty of supervision by those responsible.
The carmakers themselves were hit harder: The Braunschweig public prosecutor, for example, demanded a smooth billion euros from Volkswagen, while the Audi subsidiary had to spend another 800 million euros in order to be able to end proceedings in Munich. At the sports car manufacturer Porsche, the investigators presented an invoice for 535 million euros. Because of the misconduct, Daimler had to pay 870 million euros to the state treasury.
What did the Conti engineers know?
In the case of car manufacturers, the levy portion of the fine had a particular impact. This confiscates profits wrongly generated by the fraud. And those were considerable with the manufacturers. At Bosch, the public prosecutor’s office estimated these unjustified profits at 88 million euros; the remaining two million euros were accounted for by the actual fine.
In contrast to Bosch, Continental had already been searched twice before the new raids, in January and last July. At that time, locations in Hanover, Frankfurt and Regensburg were searched. “Continental continues to cooperate fully with the authorities,” continues the company. However, the statement contradicts the approach of the investigating authorities. They searched the business premises in Regensburg for a third time in November of last year.
The question arises as to whether the Continental engineers programmed the software for the test stand detection for the purpose of emissions manipulation. A test stand detection is not illegal per se. During the emissions test, the vehicle is only accelerated on the test bench via one axle. A test stand detection is necessary so that the driving systems, for example the ESP system, do not intervene incorrectly.
But that alone is not able to manipulate the exhaust emissions. Suppliers such as Continental therefore refer to the car manufacturers who are apparently said to have misused this test stand detection for exhaust gas manipulation.
This fact may also be the reason why the former CEO Elmar Degenhart had ruled out an active participation of Conti in the VW diesel scandal after an intensive internal investigation, which he initiated in 2015. So far there is also no evidence that Conti employees recommended VW to set up an illegal shutdown device.
More: Continental boss Nikolai Setzer: “We will review all investments and control them more specifically.”