A Volkswagen AG (VW) engineer on Friday pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud regulators and car owners, in the first criminal charges stemming from the US investigation into the German automaker’s emissions deception.
The plea by the engineer, James Robert Liang, a Volkswagen veteran, suggests that the US Department of Justice is trying to build a larger criminal case and pursue charges against other higher-level executives at the automaker.
Liang was central in the development of software that Volkswagen used to cheat pollution tests in the US, which the company admitted last year to installing in more than 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
He was also part of the cover-up, lying to regulators when they started asking questions about discrepancies in emissions.
Liang’s admissions, made in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, portray a broader conspiracy by executives, making Liang a potentially valuable resource for the developing criminal investigation.
The department said Liang, who faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, would cooperate.
The Volkswagen case has escalated quickly.
In June, the department and other agencies secured a record US$15 billion settlement in a civil suit with the company. At the time, officials were quick to say that the settlement was just a first step, adding that they would aggressively pursue a criminal case against the company and individuals.
Liang’s case followed the same broad strokes. He was also named as a main suspect in a suit filed against Volkswagen on Thursday by Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last