Volkswagen to pay €1B fine over emissions

By Cansu Dikme

ANKARA (AA) - German carmaker Volkswagen will pay €1 billion ($1.2 billion) fine over the diesel emission scandal, the company said on Wednesday.

In a statement issued by the German giant, Volkswagen accepted the charges of cheats on vehicles tests against itself.

Earlier, the Braunschweig public prosecutor issued an administrative order against Volkswagen AG over the diesel crisis, imposing a fine of €1 billion in total, the statement said, adding €995 million out of total for “disgorgement of economic benefits”.

Accepting the fine, Volkswagen said it would not lodge an appeal against it.

“Volkswagen AG, by doing so, admits its responsibility for the diesel crisis and considers this as a further major step towards the latter being overcome,” the company said.

According to the statement, the findings of the investigation carried out by the Braunschweig public prosecutor revealed: “Monitoring duties had been breached in the Powertrain Development department in the context of vehicle tests.”

“According to the results obtained by the Braunschweig public prosecutor, they were concurrent causes of 10.7 million vehicles in total with the diesel engines of the types EA 288 (Gen3), in the United States and in Canada, and EA 189, world-wide, being advertised, sold to customers, and placed on the market with an impermissible software function in the period from mid-2007 until 2015,” it added.

Volkswagen pleaded guilty last year to cheating on emissions tests by using software in nearly 600,000 of its diesel vehicles in the U.S. and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties.

In 2015, Volkswagen admitted that approximately 11 million of its vehicles worldwide contained software for cheating on emissions tests.