“Key witnesses severely incriminate VW’s top management”

Two former Volkswagen employees serving as key witnesses for US authorities have accused former and current members of the German carmaker’s top management of trying to cover up VW’s emissions fraud scheme, Claus Hulverscheidt, Georg Mascolo and Klaus Ott write in Süddeutsche Zeitung. VW’s ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn and current board member Herbert Diess had been told about manipulations of emissions test of the company’s diesel vehicles in the US in July 2015 but failed to tell US authorities, the newspaper said. “The cover-up rather continued for weeks,” the authors write. If the key witnesses’ accusations turned out to be true, the “emissions scandal would enter a new stage”, they add. VW’s position so far has been that Winterkorn and the company board had learned about the fraud scheme only days before US authorities made the issue public on 3 September 2015.

Read the article in German here.