Volkswagen emissions scandal deepens

By Sarah Harvey

A Volkswagen logo is shown on the front of an old Volkswagen van in Encinitas, California September 29, 2015. U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday asked Volkswagen to turn over documents related to the company's diesel emissions scandal.  REUTERS/Mike Blake
A Volkswagen logo is shown on the front of an old Volkswagen van in Encinitas, California September 29, 2015. U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday asked Volkswagen to turn over documents related to the company's diesel emissions scandal. REUTERS/Mike Blake

A Volkswagen board member has told the BBC staff acted criminally to cheat emissions readings in a worsening scandal for the car manufacturer.

About 11 million diesel engine cars are affected by the problem which saw the German car giant, which also manufactures Audi and Skoda, admit it had installed devices in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results.

Since the scandal has broken Volkswagen Martin Winterkorn has resigned and the company has recalled  more than 500,000 cars in the US alone. It has set aside €6.5bn to cover costs, but even that is unlikely to be enough.

Yesterday Olaf Lies, a Volkswagen board member, told the BBC  people who “allowed the deception to happen or who installed the software that allowed certain models to give false emissions readings must take personal responsibility”.

He said the board only found out about the issue at its last meeting.

Mr Lies told the BBC: “Those people who allowed this to happen, or who made the decision to install this software – they acted criminally. They must take personal responsibility.”

He said: “We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting, shortly before the media did. I want to be quite open. So we need to find out why the board wasn’t informed earlier about the problems when they were known about over a year ago in the United States.”

Lies said he had no idea of what the total repair and legal bill would be.

“Huge damage has been done because millions of people have lost their faith in VW. We are surely going to have a lot of people suing for damages. We have to recall lots of cars and it has to happen really fast.”

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Print Recipe

BECOME A MiNDFOOD SUBSCRIBER TODAY

Let us keep you up to date with our weekly MiNDFOOD e-newsletters which include the weekly menu plan, health and news updates or tempt your taste buds with the MiNDFOOD Daily Recipe. 

Member Login