MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st July, 2020) Hanover Prosecutor's Office and the local police on Wednesday conducted searches at German automotive giant Volkswagen and its supplier Continental's facilities in Hanover, Frankfurt and Regensburg in connection with the so-called Dieselgate scandal, Handelsblatt newspaper reported, citing representatives of the companies.
A representative of Continental told the newspaper that the searches were conducted as part of the investigation into possible manipulation of data about diesel engine emissions through a cheating device. Continental stressed that the company cooperates with the authorities in full and did not supply customers with software for manipulating emissions.
Meanwhile, the WirtschaftsWoche newspaper reported, citing the authorities, that the investigation is being conducted on suspicion of complicity in a fraud and indirect perjury. The probe is looking into the activities of former and current employees of the company, including seven engineers and two project managers.
US regulators accused Volkswagen in 2015 of falsifying emission test results for its diesel-engine cars, in what became known as Dieselgate. The automaker admitted that 11 million diesel cars worldwide had been equipped with pollution test cheating devices and agreed to nearly $15 billion in settlement payments. Last year, in its revenue report for the first quarter of 2019, the automaker announced that it had lost $33.6 billion since the scandal.
