Volkswagen confirms $4.3bn settlement; in addition it will plead guilty to criminal misconduct
Volkswagen has confirmed it has negotiated a $4.3bn (£3.5bn) draft settlement with US regulators to resolve its diesel emissions scandal.
The German car giant said in addition to the fine it will plead guilty to criminal misconduct as part of the civil and criminal settlement.
It will face oversight from an independent monitor over the next three years and also enact measures to strengthen compliance.
Including the fine agreed with the US government, VW’s costs will top the nearly €18.2bn (£15.7bn) it has set aside to handle the affair. The company has said the deal still needs to be approved by elements of the company as well as US courts and authorities, though an outcome is expected “in the very short term”, possibly on Wednesday or soon after.
In 2015 it was discovered that Volkswagen-manufactured cars with certain diesel engines had been fitted with a so-called defeat device, which cheated emissions tests in laboratory settings.
In a statement, Volkswagen said:
In case of a settlement agreement, the payment obligations are expected to lead to a financial expense that exceeds the current provisions. The concrete impact regarding the annual result 2016 cannot be defined at present due to its dependency on various further factors.
On Monday, a VW executive was charged by US prosecutors. The executive, who is the second employee charged in the States, was accused of conspiracy to defraud the US over the company’s emissions cheating.
Also on Monday, law firm Harcus Sinclair applied for a group litigation order against Volkswagen on behalf of thousands of British owners of VW cars.
Although the company has been hit with lawsuits in the US, it is the first such claim in the UK.
Source: CITYA.M.
