dryriver shares a report from Reuters: German prosecutors have accused Volkswagen’s CEO of holding back market-moving information on rigged emissions tests four years ago, raising the prospect of fresh upheaval at the carmaker just as it tries to reinvent itself as a champion of clean driving. Prosecutors in the city of Braunschweig said on Tuesday they would press criminal charges of stock market manipulation against Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, as well as non-executive Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and former CEO Martin Winterkorn. The charges show how the German company, which in September 2015 admitted using illegal software to cheat U.S. diesel engine tests, is struggling to move on from a scandal which has cost it more than $30 billion in vehicle refits, fines and provisions. In a statement issued after an emergency meeting, the (VW supervisory) board’s executive committee said it “cannot see that there was any deliberate attempt not to inform the capital market.” The former U.S. regulator who helped bring Volkswagen’s cheating to light dismissed the company’s arguments. “The excuse that top managers knew nothing is very weak,” Alberto Ayala, who served at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) until 2017, told German news magazine Spiegel. Separately on Tuesday, German prosecutors hit rival carmaker Daimler with an 870 million euro fine for breaking diesel emissions rules. The Stuttgart-based maker of Mercedes-Benz cars said it would not appeal.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot