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German prosecutors charge ex-VW chief with fraud

German prosecutors said Monday they had charged former Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn, and four other managers, over the group's "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal.

German prosecutors charge ex-VW chief with fraud
Martin Winterkorn, the former head of VW, at a meeting about the emissions scandel in January 2017. Photo: DPA

They “are accused of multiple crimes realised in a single criminal action, especially a particularly serious case of fraud and an infraction of the law against unfair competition,” the prosecutors said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether the other accused — who were not named — still work at VW or have since left the company.

Winterkorn has been singled out for his role as a “guarantor” to authorities and customers that the group was not selling cheating vehicles “even after he knew about the illegal manipulations” — knowledge the prosecutors said he had “from May 25, 2014”.

SEE ALSO: VW boss being investigated for 'market manipulation' after dieselgate

That date was more than a year before VW publicly admitted to fitting 11 million vehicles with software to make them appear less polluting in the lab than in real driving conditions.

“In the end, this resulted in the imposition of higher fines against Volkswagen AG in Germany as well as the USA,” the prosecutors said.

As well as failing to inform authorities of the cheating, VW “with the knowledge and approval of Winterkorn” issued a software update in November 2014 whose only purpose was to cover up the so-called “defeat devices” that enabled the cheating, said the statement.

VW shares were little moved by the charges, gaining 0.4 percent to trade at €154 around 1:15pm in Frankfurt (1115 GMT), slightly outperforming the DAX blue-chip index.

The Wolfsburg-based group has so far suffered costs of 29 billion related to dieselgate, much of it in fines, compensation and buyback schemes in the United States.

SEE ALSO: Despite setbacks, Volkswagen boasts sales record in 2018

In Germany, the group has paid €1.8 billion spread over two fines.

Aftershocks from the scandal have been serious enough to change the gigantic firm's course, with bosses now making a massive bet on electrification over the next decade.

But the legacy of dieselgate is still clinging to VW, with hundreds of thousands of customers in Germany bringing cases demanding compensation for their manipulated vehicles.

And investors have opened two court cases against VW and its holding company Porsche SE, saying bosses should have informed markets sooner about the likely financial impact of the cheating.

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POLLUTION

‘Infringement on air quality’: EU court slams Germany for pollution in cities

The EU's top court ruled on Thursday that Germany continually violated upper limits for nitrogen dioxide, a polluting gas from diesel motors that causes major health problems, over several years.

'Infringement on air quality': EU court slams Germany for pollution in cities
Cars sit in traffic in Stuttgart's Hauptstätter Straße in July 2020. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sebastian Gollnow

Germany infringed air quality rules “by systematically and persistently exceeding” the annual nitrogen dioxide limit in 26 out of 89 areas from 2010 to 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in its ruling.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, referred the matter to the ECJ in 2018 after almost a decade of warnings that went unaddressed.

The decision against Europe’s top economy echoes a ruling targeting France in October 2019 after the commission stepped up its anti-pollution fight in the wake of the so-called “Dieselgate” scandal that erupted in 2015 with revelations about Germany’s Volkswagen.

The motors caught up in the scandal — in which automakers installed
special emission-cheating devices into their car engines — are the main emitters of nitrogen oxides that the European Environment Agency says are responsible for 68,000 premature deaths per year in the EU.

READ ALSO: Five things to know about Germany’s dieselgate scandal

Nitrogen dioxide is toxic and can cause significant respiratory problems as one of the main constituents of traffic-jam smog.

Under EU rules, member countries are required to keep the gas to under 40 micrograms per cubic metre — but that level is often exceeded in many traffic-clogged European cities.

The judgement opens the way to possible sanctions at a later stage. However the air quality throughout much of Germany has improved in the last five years, particularly during the shutdowns in the pandemic.

The environment ministry said that 90 cities exceeded national pollution limits in 2016 — the final year covered by the court ruling. By 2019, the number had fallen to 25 and last year, during the coronavirus outbreak, it was just six.

The case involved 26 areas in Germany, including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart as well as urban and rural areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, Mainz, Worms/Frankenthal/Ludwigshafen and Koblenz/Neuwied.

“Furthermore, Germany infringed the directive by systematically and
persistently exceeding, during that period, the hourly limit value for NO2 in two of those zones” — the Stuttgart area and the Rhine-Main region.

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