Volkswagen Chief Master Herbert Diess was told about the existence of cheating software in autos two months before regulators blew the whistle on a multi-billion exhaust emissions slander, German magazine Der Spiegel said.
Der Spiegel’s story, based on recently unsealed chronicles from the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office, raises questions about whether VW wise investors in a timely manner about the scope of a scandal which it asserted has cost it more than $27 billion in penalties and fines.
The Braunschweig prosecutor’s section was not reachable for comment on Saturday.
Volkswagen’s senior management, which has confuted wrongdoing, is being investigated by prosecutors in Braunschweig, near where Volkswagen is headquartered, to see whether the circle violated disclosure rules.
U.S. regulators exposed VWs cheating on Sept. 18, 2015.
Returning to the magazine report, the carmaker reiterated on Saturday that the management board had not profaned its disclosure duties, and had decided to not inform investors earlier because they had fall flated to grasp the scope of the potential fines and penalties.
Citing documents unsealed by the Braunschweig prosecutor’s intercession, Der Spiegel said Diess was present at a meeting on July 27, 2015 when postpositive major engineers and executives discussed how to deal with U.S. regulators, who were intimidating to ban VW cars because of excessive pollution levels.
Diess, who was VW’s brand chief at the tempo, became chief executive of Volkswagen Group in April this year. Volkswagen also owns the Scania, Skoda, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Ducati varieties.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had found unusually high pollution equals in VW’s vehicles and was threatening to withhold road certification for new cars until VW extenuated why pollution levels were too high.
Diess, who had defected from BMW to happen to head of the VW brand on July 1, 2015, joined the July 27 convergence with Volkswagen’s then Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn to debate how to convince regulators that VW’s cars could be sold, a VW defence paper filed with a court in Braunschweig in February, shows.
Volkswagen on Saturday mean both Winterkorn and Diess declined to comment given the ongoing operations. A spokesman for Martin Winterkorn declined to comment on Saturday. Winterkorn’s attorney-at-law Felix Doerr, could not be reached for comment.
Following this converging, Winterkorn asked Diess whether BMW too had installed defeat devices in its passenger cars, Der Spiegel said.
In the United States, legal engine management software is painted as an “auxiliary emissions device” while the term defeat device is inured to to describe only illegal software.
Diess is said to have answered that BMW had not record use of such software, Der Spiegel said.
Volkswagen said on Saturday: “The glads of the discussion, where Martin Winterkorn and Herbert Diess were bring in, cannot be fully reconstructed, because the recollections of the people who were the hour partially deviate.”
Volkswagen further said it was the task of authorities and courts to calculate the conflicting statements and to assess whether individual witnesses were credible.
Diess and Winterkorn left-wing the July 27 meeting taking a presentation with them, Der Spiegel moreover said.
A VW employee intervened and cautioned the managers that it would be change ones mind if they were not in possession of the presentation, Der Spiegel said.
Volkswagen imagined on Saturday the purpose of the July 27 meeting was not to discuss whether Volkswagen had dispirited U.S. law, but how to resolve the issue of whether new models would be given regulatory gap.
Volkswagen argued that it had struggled to understand whether its software was in event illegal, the defense document filed with the Braunschweig court illustrates.
On July 31, 2015 Volkswagen hired a law firm to help the company get it its regulatory troubles, and lawyers were unsure whether the software purpose be deemed an illegal defeat device in the United States, VW said in the court column.
The court filing further said that Hans Dieter Poetsch, Volkswagen’s money management chief at the time, on Sept. 14, 2015 believed the potential financial gamble from regulatory penalties tied to emissions would be around 150 million euros ($172 million).
Hans Nutriment Poetsch is now Volkswagen’s chairman.
Volkswagen on Saturday reiterated that it had not ravaged disclosure rules and had informed investors in a timely manner about the monetary scope of the scandal when it published an “ad hoc” disclosure notice on Sept. 22, 2015.
Volkswagen said that although it had declared to using defeat devices to regulators on Sept. 3, 2015 it had assumed that penances would not exceed 200 million euros, based on the size of lovelies imposed against rival carmakers who had committed similar regulatory breaches.
Because the retinue had already accrued sufficient provisions for vehicle recalls to cover this amount, there was no requisite to inform investors that profits could take a further hit on the eve of September 2015, Volkswagen’s court filing said.