Volkswagen AG is nearing a deal to pay more than US$2 billion to resolve a federal criminal investigation into its cheating on emissions tests, according to three people briefed on the negotiations.
The company or one of its corporate entities is expected to plead guilty to criminal charges as part of the deal, one of the people said, although what those charges might be is unclear.
The settlement could come as early as next week, barring any last-minute hiccups, those people said.
The German automaker is eager to put the US Department of Justice investigation behind it before US president-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, according to two others familiar with the company’s position.
An intensive investigation into the manipulation of diesel emissions tests began more than a year ago, and involves US and German investigators and prosecutors. A resolution of the criminal investigation in the US would allow VW to try to move past a scandal that has hobbled its diesel car business.
It is unclear whether prosecutors would also charge Volkswagen employees, but high-ranking US justice officials have forecast the possibility.
“We will follow the facts wherever they go, and we will determine whether to bring criminal charges against any companies or individual wrongdoers,” US deputy attorney general Sally Yates said last year at a news conference.
Volkswagen acknowledged in 2015 that it had fitted 11 million diesel cars worldwide with illegal software that made the vehicles capable of defeating pollution tests.
The software enabled the cars to detect when they were being tested for emissions and turn on pollution-control systems to curb emissions at the cost of engine performance.
However, those emissions controls were not fully deployed on the road, where cars spewed nitrogen oxide at up to 40 times the levels allowed under the Clean Air Act.
The company has agreed to pay up to nearly US$16 billion to resolve civil claims in what has become one of the US’ largest consumer class-action settlements ever, involving half a million cars.
Progress toward a resolution of the case has been frustrated by differences in German and US law and customs. German prosecutors do not work out plea deals with suspects as routinely as prosecutors in the US do.
Punishments in the US also tend to be harsher and are seen as unacceptable by the German suspects.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day