Volkswagen’s senior management was briefed in the summer of 2015 on the cheating software at the centre of the company’s diesel emissions scandal, and ordered its continued concealment, according to criminal charges unsealed by US prosecutors on Monday.
VW employees briefed “executive management” in July 2015 at the German carmaker’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, about the use of software-based defeat devices to understate emissions in official tests, says a criminal complaint about the company’s former head of compliance in the US.
“Rather than advocate for disclosure of the defeat device to US regulators, VW executive management authorised its continued concealment,” adds the complaint.