German prosecutors have widened a probe into suspected market manipulation by managers at Volkswagen AG (VW) to include the automaker’s supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, VW said on Sunday.
The probe, which relates to Poetsch’s time as finance chief of VW, is the latest fallout from the automaker’s admission last year that it cheated on diesel emissions tests.
VW has admitted that it installed software that deactivated pollution controls on more than 11 million diesel vehicles sold worldwide, rattling its global business, damaging its reputation and prompting the departure of chief executive Martin Winterkorn.
Adding to its woes, a German newspaper reported on Sunday that a US regulator found another cheat software device in vehicles made by its luxury division, Audi.
The paper said the device was not the same as the one which triggered last year’s diesel emissions scandal at Audi parent VW.
Audi has declined to comment on the report.
The prosecutors’ office in Braunschweig, Germany, first announced the market manipulation probe in June, targeting former chief executive officer Winterkorn and VW brand chief Herbert Diess for suspected market manipulation related to the emissions scandal.
The office said at the time that its probe centered on evidence that VW’s duty to disclose possible financial damage from the emissions test cheating might have arisen before Sept. 22 last year, when the automaker publicly admitted its wrongdoing.
“Based on a thorough examination by internal and external legal experts, the company reaffirms its belief that VW’s management fulfilled its duties to inform the capital market,” VW said.
It said the company and Poetsch, who was finance chief of VW from 2003 until he became chairman in October last year, would fully support the prosecutors’ office in its investigation.
Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag report said that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) had made a new discovery of cheating software in an automatic transmission Audi in summer this year.
Audi, the main contributor to earnings at parent VW, had already admitted last year to using illicit emissions-control devices in about 85,000 3-liter diesel engines and has so far this year set aside 752 million euros (US$838 million) to cover related costs.
Bild am Sonntag, which cited no sources, said the software in the CARB’s new discovery lowered carbon dioxide emissions by detecting whether a car’s steering wheel was turned as it would be if it was driving on a road.
If the steering wheel was not turned, as if it was being tested in a laboratory, the software turned on a gear-shifting program that produced less carbon dioxide, allowing the car to meet the emissions criteria, it said.
If the wheel turned by more than 15 degrees, as if it was being driven, it turned the software off, the paper said.
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