Volkswagen AG’s (VW) former supervisory board chief has told German investigators that former VW chief executive officer Martin Winterkorn knew about the “dieselgate” emissions cheating scam well before the scandal broke, news weekly Der Spiegel reported on Friday.
“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 US.
The source told Piech that US authorities were looking into its use of manipulating software to dupe pollution tests and had passed on their findings to Volkswagen.
Piech then asked Winterkorn about it, who assured him that no such document from US officials existed, according to Der Spiegel.
Volkswagen in September 2015 first admitted 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.
However, prosecutors in the German city of Brunswick last week announced that they were investigating Winterkorn for fraud, saying they had “sufficient indications” he knew about the cheating earlier.
According to Der Spiegel, Piech gave his damning testimony when he was questioned by prosecutors last year.
The spokesman for the prosecutors’ office in Brunswick could not immediately be reached for comment.
Felix Doerr, a lawyer for Winterkorn, said in a statement that his client was aware Piech had spoken to prosecutors but did not yet know “the details of this statement.”
Piech and his one-time protege Winterkorn are embroiled in a long-running rivalry.
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 officer 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.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
BIG BUCKS: Chairman Wei is expected to receive NT$34.12 million on a proposed NT$5 cash dividend plan, while the National Development Fund would get NT$8.27 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday announced that its board of directors approved US$15.25 billion in capital appropriations for long-term expansion to meet growing demand. The funds are to be used for installing advanced technology and packaging capacity, expanding mature and specialty technology, and constructing fabs with facility systems, TSMC said in a statement. The board also approved a proposal to distribute a NT$5 cash dividend per share, based on first-quarter earnings per share of NT$13.94, it said. That surpasses the NT$4.50 dividend for the fourth quarter of last year. TSMC has said that while it is eager
‘IMMENSE SWAY’: The top 50 companies, based on market cap, shape everything from technology to consumer trends, advisory firm Visual Capitalist said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) was ranked the 10th-most valuable company globally this year, market information advisory firm Visual Capitalist said. TSMC sat on a market cap of about US$915 billion as of Monday last week, making it the 10th-most valuable company in the world and No. 1 in Asia, the publisher said in its “50 Most Valuable Companies in the World” list. Visual Capitalist described TSMC as the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry operator that rolls out chips for major tech names such as US consumer electronics brand Apple Inc, and artificial intelligence (AI) chip designers Nvidia Corp and Advanced
Pegatron Corp (和碩), an iPhone assembler for Apple Inc, is to spend NT$5.64 billion (US$186.82 million) to acquire HTC Corp’s (宏達電) factories in Taoyuan and invest NT$578.57 million in its India subsidiary to expand manufacturing capacity, after its board approved the plans on Wednesday. The Taoyuan factories would expand production of consumer electronics, and communication and computing devices, while the India investment would boost production of communications devices and possibly automotive electronics later, a Pegatron official told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday. Pegatron expects to complete the Taoyuan factory transaction in the third quarter, said the official, who declined to be
RSS