Volkswagen’s huge diesel emissions scandal: the full story – The Verge

Volkswagen wraps multiyear investigation into Dieselgate

2021-03-26T14:23:27-04:00

The Volkswagen Group has wrapped a multiyear internal investigation into Dieselgate, and it says it will try to pry compensation from former CEO Martin Winterkorn and former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler to make up for some of the massive financial damages that resulted from the emissions cheating scandal.

The law firm Volkswagen hired to perform the investigation covered more than 65 petabytes of data, including some 480 million documents. About 1.6 million of those files were "identified as relevant, screened and reviewed," the German automaker says. The law firm also performed 1,550 interviews and reviewed files from prosecutorial and judicial …

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Daimler will settle its diesel emissions cheating scandal with the US for over $2 billion

2020-08-13T14:49:26-04:00

Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, is paying over $2 billion to make its own diesel emissions cheating scandal go away in the United States.

The company announced on Thursday that it has reached a $1.5 billion settlement with US authorities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board, the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, the California Attorney General's Office, and the US Customs and Border Protection, winding up a four-year probe that kicked off following Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal. Daimler has also settled a separate class action lawsuit from vehicle o …

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VW settlement and Porsche raid show Dieselgate fallout hasn’t stopped

2020-02-28T13:22:47-05:00

Four and a half years after the Volkswagen Dieselgate broke, the company is still facing scrutiny on two continents. In its home country Germany on Friday, the Volkswagen Group agreed to pay a settlement of nearly $1 billion to hundreds of thousands of owners who argued their cars lost value after the scandal. The same day, Porsche's offices were raided again by German police in an effort to uncover new evidence about Dieselgate.

On top of that, in America, Volkswagen has spent the last week defending itself in court against owners who declined to be a part of the automaker's multibillion-dollar Dieselgate settlement.

All of this shows tha …

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Germany charges ex-Audi CEO for alleged role in Dieselgate

2019-07-31T10:34:02-04:00

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler has been charged by German prosecutors over his alleged role in the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal, along with three other defendants who were not named. Stadler is accused of helping the automaker cheat emissions tests to make Audi's cars appear cleaner than they really were as well as covering up that fraud.

Stadler is the second high-profile Volkswagen Group executive to be hit with criminal charges in Germany; former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn was charged in April. (Winterkorn was also indicted in the United States in 2018.) Four top Audi managers were indicted by a grand jury in the United States in …

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Ex-VW CEO charged over Dieselgate, faces millions in fines and 10 years in prison

2019-04-16T04:06:47-04:00

German prosecutors have charged VW's ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn over his role in the Dieselgate scandal. Winterkorn is accused of knowing about the conspiracy as early as 2014 but failing to inform regulators or consumers. Along with four others, he's also accused of unfair competition, embezzlement, tax evasion, and giving false witness. The New York Times notes that these are the first criminal charges to be filed against an individual in Germany over the scheme.

The former VW CEO is thought to have played a substantial role in the scandal, which saw millions of diesel vehicles sold worldwide that produced illegal levels of pollution despit …

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Four top Audi employees indicted in Dieselgate scandal

2019-01-17T20:46:22-05:00

A federal grand jury in Detroit has indicted four former Audi managers for their alleged role in the German automaker's scheme to cheat US emissions testing on diesel-powered cars, according to a new court document published Thursday. Audi's malfeasance was part of a larger effort from parent company Volkswagen Group to sell millions of cars with engines that were dirtier than regulations allowed, a scandal that was uncovered in 2015 and has since been dubbed "Dieselgate."

Richard Bauder, Axel Eiser, Stefan Knirsch, and Carsten Nagel were charged with multiple counts of violating the Clean Air Act, committing wire fraud, and conspiracy to d …

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Volkswagen fires Audi CEO after Dieselgate arrest

2018-10-02T13:37:18-04:00

Audi executive Rupert Stadler has been forced out of the company as a result of his alleged role in the Dieselgate scandal. Stadler was fully removed from his post as CEO on Tuesday, as well as his position on the boards of Audi and Volkswagen Group, according to the German automakers. Stadler was suspended from the CEO role earlier this summer after he was arrested by German authorities on suspicion that he knew about the company-wide effort to cheat emissions tests.

Stadler was CEO of Audi when the emissions cheating scandal broke in 2015. That September, the EPA accused Audi's parent company Volkswagen of intentionally installing softwar …

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Volkswagen’s former CEO charged in the US for diesel cheating scandal: report

2018-05-03T15:53:31-04:00

Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of Volkswagen, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the US related to the massive diesel emissions cheating scandal that has ensnared the German automaker for almost three years. According to Bloomberg, Winterkorn's indictment was unsealed in federal court in Michigan on Thursday. The former CEO was also charged with violations of the Clean Air Act.

Winterkorn is the latest former VW executive to face charges in the Dieselgate investigation, which has cost the automaker billions of dollars in fines and settlement money and severely damaged its reputation on a global scale. Last December, Oliver Schmidt, t …

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Volkswagen settles diesel emissions lawsuit right before trial set to begin

2018-02-26T14:55:47-05:00

Volkswagen settled a major diesel emissions class action lawsuit brought by hundreds of vehicle owners right before the case was set to go to trial. The German auto giant's US division settled the lawsuit brought by a North Carolina man and over 300 other owners of diesel cars who allege fraud and unfair trade practices.

The trial could have featured testimony from current and former VW executives and would likely have caused a spate of bad press for the automaker regarding the Dieselgate scandal. Since it first broke in 2015, the controversy has led to the resignation of VW's CEO, seen a handful of executives sentenced to jail, and resulte …

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VW executive given the maximum prison sentence for his role in Dieselgate

2017-12-06T17:10:23-05:00

The man who was in charge of Volkswagen's US environmental and engineering office before the Dieselgate scandal has been sentenced to seven years in prison. Oliver Schmidt had previously pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act and conspiracy to defraud the US government in August for his role in Dieselgate, where VW was found to have used hidden software to hide the fact that many of its cars weren't meeting emissions standards.

The prison term and an accompanying $400,000 fine were announced at a sentencing hearing today in a US District Court in Detroit. They represent the maximum penalties for those charges.

Schmidt originally fac …

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