Volkswagen AG – VW concealed exhaust affair – Süddeutsche.de

• The former VW board headed by Martin Winterkorn was informed as early as September 2015, the manipulation of gas measurements, these violations of the law concealed but the shareholders and the public.
• This is after information of SZ, NDR and WDR from a statement by VW for the Landgericht Braunschweig.
• Move the findings both supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch and CEO Matthias Müller in distress.

From Thomas Fromm and Klaus Ott

the former, led by Martin Winterkorn VW board was informed in September 2015, the manipulation of exhaust measurements in the US, but concealed the shareholders and the public, these violations of the law. That brings supervisory board chairman and former Chief Financial Officer Hans Dieter Pötsch also in distress and winter grain successor as CEO, the former Porsche CEO Matthias Müller. Both had then belonged to the VW board and apparently bore the secrecy with.

The results for information from Süddeutsche Zeitung , NDR and WDR from a statement by VW for the Landgericht Braunschweig with which Volkswagen wants to fend off lawsuits filed by shareholders. The shareholders want to get the massive price losses replaced since the beginning of the affair. Volkswagen, the return, and indirectly even the US authorities a complicity in the amount of exhaust gas affair that could cost the German carmaker billions of euros.

There had been a “confidentiality interests” of the Group

Only by the “unexpected” announcement of the violation of the law by the US environmental Protection agency on 18 September 2015 and the Notice of the EPO on the “theoretical maximum penalty” in the billions it had come to the high losses of the VW shares. This was an “overreaction” on the stock exchange have been, writes a commissioned by VW law firm in the opinion for the court. It says the former CFO Pötsch had gone out of a possible fine of 100 million euros.

In the paper Volkswagen describes the course of the exhaust manipulation in the US with nearly 500 000. affected vehicles and the knowledge and behavior the former Board. Thus had been shortly before the unveiling of illegal practices by the EPA about the violations in the picture Winterkorn and his colleagues. The Board considered it but better to be silent. It was then given a “confidentiality interests” of the group, according to the opinion of the court.

The VW board was entitled to take the US authorities was a “solution” without severe penalties possible. The aim of the “temporary secrecy” was “concealment” not. Volkswagen wanted to win rather time for negotiations with the US authorities. The Tübingen lawyer Andreas Tilp who represents many shareholders and a test case seeking, unconvinced that. VW was “only ever be, what can not be longer hide”.

The VW Briefs for the Court suggests that the board wanted to keep open the chance to hold the violations of law in the long term secret , In the paper, is in the US such manipulations were at other companies have been punished with “manageable fines”, “without the offense became public knowledge, let alone supported by the US authorities proactively to the public”. The VW board have until recently had the impression that the US authorities were just as Volkswagen interested “in a constructive dialogue”.