The Canadian government on Monday said that it is charging Volkswagen AG for importing vehicles that company executives knew breached the nation’s emissions standards.
The German automaker faces 58 charges of contravening the Canadian Environmental Protection Act for importing 128,000 vehicles with illegal emissions standards between 2008 and 2015. The company faces two other charges of providing misleading information.
Volkswagen issued a statement saying that it has cooperated fully with Canadian investigators and that a deal is prepared ahead of the company’s first court appearance in Toronto on Friday.
“At the hearing, the parties will submit for the court’s consideration a proposed plea resolution and seek its approval,” the statement said. “The details of the proposed plea resolution will be presented at the hearing.”
Environment Canada officials on Monday published notice of the charges, but said that they would not comment further because the matter is before the courts.
The case against Volkswagen comes more than four years after the company admitted to installing software on 11 million vehicles worldwide to trick emissions-testing equipment into concluding that they ran more cleanly than they actually did.
Volkswagen pleaded guilty to charges in the case in the US in March 2017 and was fined more than US$4.3 billion.
Several Volkswagen executives and managers involved in the deception were charged in the US and Germany, and some have already been imprisoned.
The elaborate scheme has cost the company more than US$30 billion in legal fines and civic lawsuits, as well as compensation to customers who returned affected vehicles for refunds or exchanges.
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