VW pleads guilty, to pay $4.3bn in ‘dieselgate’

Volkswagen AG will plead guilty to three criminal charges and pay a total $4.3 billion in fines to settle the emissions cheating scandal known as “dieselgate,” US officials announced on Wednesday.
The US Justice Department said VW is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and violate the Clean Air Act with defeat devices on its diesel vehicles that evaded emissions standards.
The company will pay $2.8 billion in criminal fines, and $1.5 billion in civil fines.
That is in addition to $17.5 billion already agreed in settlements with car owners, dealers and for environmental cleanup.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Wednesday unveiled the settlement with Volkswagen.
The settlement does not impact the government’s ongoing investigation into individual misconduct by current and former VW employees. Volkswagen had previously agreed to spend up to $17.5 billion in the United States to resolve claims by US regulators, owners and dealers and offered to buy back nearly 500,000 polluting vehicles. The automaker was in intensive talks with regulators in recent weeks in an effort to reach a deal before the end of the Obama administration.
Without a deal by next week, a final resolution could have been delayed by months until the Trump EPA and Justice Department teams are in place.
VW admitted in September 2015 to installing secret software in hundreds of thousands of US diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner than they were on the road, and that as many as 11 million vehicles could have similar software installed worldwide.
On Monday, a VW executive, the second VW employee charged by US prosecutors, was accused of conspiracy to defraud the US over the company’s emissions cheating and the automaker was charged with concealing the cheating from regulators. Much of the company’s senior management departed following the scandal, including chief executive Martin Winterkorn.

Source: Arab News