Justice Foster’s order for Volkswagen to “provide written verified answers” to who knew what when, sits against the backdrop of the US Department of Justice plea deal struck with the company in January 2017.
In the plea deal, Volkswagen confessed to three criminal charges relating to the installation of software designed to mask the amount of nitrogen oxide its cars produced so they would pass US regulators’ emissions tests.
During laboratory tests, the software in cars fitted with EA189 engines ensured that they passed but then reverted to “comfort mode” where they were more driver-friendly but produced higher levels of toxic compounds.
“I’m not saying anything about the United States – we say it’s not relevant,” Volkswagen’s lawyer Noel Hutley, SC, told the judge at the hearing last March.
Outside court a spokesman for Volkswagen Group Australia said then that the company did not breach Australian consumer laws.
“Volkswagen maintains there is no foundation for the current lawsuits because affected vehicles in Australia continue to comply with the emission standards to which they were originally certified,” he said in a statement.
“Furthermore, the vehicles continue to satisfy European and Australian emission standards following the application of the update to the engine control software,” the spokesman said.
Since the company has not voluntarily provided information relating to which Volkswagen and Audi board members and senior management knew about the software, when they knew it and how each person came to know of the software’s existence, Justice Foster has given Volkswagen until February 1 to comply.
“The way they’ve tricked us and the way they’ve treated us since this came to light has been beyond bad; it is the worst customer relations management one could imagine,” Volkswagen owner and lead plaintiff in the class action, Alister Dalton, said.
In addition to pleading guilty in the US, the company agreed to pay a $US2.8 billion penalty.
“We’ve totally screwed up,” the then Volkswagen America boss Michael Horn said when the international scandal broke in 2015.
A former Volkswagen executive, Oliver Schmidt, was sentenced to seven years prison in 2017 and fined $US400,000 for participating in what US prosecutors called “one of the largest corporate fraud schemes in American history,” which law firm Maurice Blackburn claims affects more than 100,000 Australian car owners.
Volkswagen has also agreed to pay a €1 billion fine in Germany.
“Volkswagen, by doing so, admits its responsibility for the diesel crisis and considers this as a further major step towards the latter being overcome,” the company said in a statement in June 2018.
Five days later, on June 18, Audi chief executive Rupert Stadler was arrested in Germany for his alleged role in the emissions cheating scandal.
The next hearing before Justice Foster, to establish how the court will manage the case, is on February 12.
from Just News Viral http://bit.ly/2Tvji0c
0 Comments