An investigation led by U.S. law firm Jones Day has concluded that current Volkswagen Group chief executive Matthias Muller had no prior knowledge of dieselgate.
Reuters says that German newspaper Bild am Sonntag uncovered the news which asserts the Jones Day report confirmed that Muller didn’t know about dieselgate until September 18, 2015 when regulators in the United States made the revelation that the company had cheated emissions tests of select diesel vehicles.
When news about dieselgate broke, Muller was serving as the chief executive of Porsche and just one week later, was appointed to lead the entire Volkswagen Group after the resignation of Martin Winterkorn immediately after the scandal.
Late last month, investigators from Jones Day also concluded that Audi chief executive Rupert Stadler didn’t know about dieselgate before the public either.
Although these two executives appear to have escaped the scandal scot-free, the company itself is still plagued by the scandal. Only around 10 per cent of the 8.5 million vehicles affected by emissions-cheating software in Europe have been recalled and the company has set an ambitious target of fixing the rest by the end of 2017.
PHOTO
