Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLLUTION

Did VW’s CEO know of emissions scam all along? Yes, says his boss

Volkswagen's former supervisory board chief has told German investigators that ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn knew about the "dieselgate" emissions cheating scam well before the scandal broke, news weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday.

Published: 3 February 2017 16:42 CET
Did VW's CEO know of emissions scam all along? Yes, says his boss
Martin Winterkorn. Photo: DPA

“Ferdinand Piech has incriminated the group's former chief executive Martin Winterkorn with a detailed statement to prosecutors,” the German magazine said, without citing its sources.

According to the report, Piech told prosecutors that he himself learned from an informant in February 2015 that the company had a “big problem” in the United States.

The source told Piech that US authorities were looking into its use of manipulating software to dupe pollution tests and had passed on their suspicions to Volkswagen.

Piech then asked Winterkorn about it, who assured him that no such document from US officials existed, according to Der Spiegel.

Volkswagen admitted in September 2015 that it had installed so-called defeat devices in 11 million diesel engines worldwide to make the cars seem less polluting than they were.

Winterkorn resigned days after the admission but has always insisted he knew nothing of the scam before it became public knowledge.

Prosecutors in the German city of Brunswick however announced last week that they were investigating Winterkorn for fraud, saying they had “sufficient indications” he knew about the cheating earlier than he has admitted.

According to Der Spiegel, Piech gave his damning testimony when he was questioned by the prosecutors last year.

The spokesman for the prosecution's office in Brunswick could not immediately be reached for comment.

If confirmed, it would be the latest shot across the bow in a long-running rivalry between Piech and his one-time protege.

Piech unexpectedly resigned as head of the German auto giant's supervisory board in April 2015 following a bitter power struggle with Winterkorn after the pair apparently fell out over Volkswagen's difficulties in making inroads in the lucrative US market.

Piech, 79, is the grandson of the inventor of the iconic Beetle, the model on which VW's fortune was built, and was himself VW's chief executive between 1993 and 2002.

He is also one of the representatives of the Porsche family, whose holding company Porsche SE holds 52 percent of VW.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLLUTION

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain’s ‘poisonous mega farms’

The “uncontrolled” growth of industrial farming of livestock and poultry in Spain is causing water pollution from nitrates to soar, Greenpeace warned in a new report on Thursday.

Published: 15 October 2021 09:02 CEST
Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'
Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

SHOW COMMENTS