Skip to main content

U.S. Gives Volkswagen’s New Boss ‘Safe Passage’ Guarantee

Shortly after the United States formally accused former CEO of Volkswagen Martin Winterkorn of criminal wrongdoing related to the company’s diesel emission scandal, it decided to let the company’s new boss know that he’s safe to visit whenever he likes. The U.S. Justice Department has agreed to give Herbert Diess a safe-passage deal that allows him to travel without fear of being arrested.

Diess was also given the country’s assurance that he’ll be given advance notice if prosecutors eventually decide to charge him over the emissions cheating issue. So far as we know, no such deal exists for his predecessor, Matthias Müller, who replaced Winterkorn in September of 2015.

While the arrangement is supposed to be confidential, Bloomberg reported that two people familiar with the matter have confirmed its existence. “This is certainly a unique situation, and there are likely facts that the general public is not aware of that would allow for such an arrangement,” said formal federal prosecutor Michael Koenig.

Since Diess joined VW shortly before the scandal became public knowledge, there is little reason to assume he was involved in the subterfuge. However, he was in attendance for a July 27, 2015 meeting where U.S. emissions irregularities were explained to senior managers. That gathering is believed to have been the moment when Winterkorn “approved the continued concealment of the cheating software from U.S. regulators.”

Being privy to that meeting may mean Diess has important information. The safe-passage deal may even have hinged upon him sharing some of that information. Witnesses and subjects of investigations are sometimes guaranteed safe travel so they can testify. Still, sources have already said Diess didn’t help with the case against Winterkorn. So authorities are presumably holding out hopes that he’ll want to talk later and/or have already cleared him of any criminal involvement worthy of arrest.

How involved Diess was in the emissions scandal is unclear, though. It’s unlikely he played any role in the decision to implement defeat devices in VW Group cars, but he may have withheld information about a corporate cover-up. In Germany, he’s under investigation for market manipulation, but so are a gaggle of other high-ranking Volkswagen employees. The most we can assume is that he’s a person of interest right now.

this article first appeared on thetruthaboutcars.com

The post U.S. Gives Volkswagen’s New Boss ‘Safe Passage’ Guarantee appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2I5hHsV
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Saying Goodbye to the CC V6

For all its size and its global reach, Volkswagen is still, in many ways, a deeply human company. There was, for instance, the Bugatti Veyron an ego project if ever there was one. Then the purchase of Ducati, a move most called folly. And then there was the Phaeton, the Volkswagen that most folks can’t afford. Not only were these moves all strange, I’m sure that they made VW’s accountants furious. None of them made good business sense, but they were all deeply interesting and they all are evidence of the heart that beats at the center of VW. Among these follies is the CC, a car that everyone agrees is rakishly handsome, but that no one really wanted to buy. The car couldn’t last, but the world is brighter for its having been in it. With the approach debut of the Arteon, it seems like a good time to look back on its sadly departing predecessor. The version I drove, because I live in Canada, is a V6 Wolfsburg Edition, which apparently isn’t available in the States. Nor is the V6, not as...
Post a Comment
Read more

T-Prime Makes World Premiere at Beijing

[ See image gallery at www.vwvortex.com ] The SUV segment is one of the fastest growing segments in the world and Volkswagen is showing the world how to do it. With the new T-Prime Concept GTE that was revealed today, the company is showing off all of the technology you can look for in its coming models. The T-Prime is a full-size hybrid SUV that can go up to 31 miles on a charge and gets 87 mpg. The hybrid power station is good for 375 hp and 516 lb/ft of torque and puts the power down with 4MOTION all wheel drive. It’ll get you up to 60 in six seconds. The concept’s real party piece, though, is its interior, which features exclusively touch, gesture, and voice controls. Everything from the infotainment, to the display, and even the gears are controlled by touch-screen. The T-Prime Concept GTE is bigger than the Touareg, and design elements are likely to find their way into all of their SUVs, of which there will be many. Volkswagen is also announcing that they expect to make an S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Transport Does a Whole Hell of a lot More than Transport

Petrolicious doesn’t only feature million-dollar classics, it also features the more generally neat, like this 1996 T4 Transporter that became Instagram famous and started and is starting an empire. Callum Creaser’s T4 started life as a panel van, but over the years it has become a homebrew camper van that has gone on adventures around the world. After posting about his adventures to Instagram, the diesel van gained a following and launched The Rolling Home, a series about other people’s small spaces and homey cars. Based on a 1.4-liter diesel with no ECU, Callum says his T4 is easy as pie to work on since information is widely available from sources like ours. The post Watch: The Transport Does a Whole Hell of a lot More than Transport appeared first on VWVortex . from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2KR01Sv via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more