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Home >> auto >> Article
Audi fined 800 million euros in "dieselgate" scandal
From:Xinhua  |  2018-10-16 23:25

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BERLIN, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- German carmaker Audi was handed an 800-million-euro (927.8 million U.S. dollars) regulatory fine by the Munich State Prosecution Office in the course of "dieselgate" investigations, Volkswagen AG, the mother corporation of the luxury carmaker, announced on Tuesday.

"Audi AG has accepted the fine and hence accepts its responsibility", a statement by Volkswagen read.

The official reasoning for the fine was provided with Audi's "divergence from regulatory requirements" in its production of certain diesel motors. The exact sum was arrived at from the combination of a punitive penalty of five million euros, the highest which can be awarded under German law in such cases, and an estimated 795 million euros in additional earnings which the Ingolstadt-based company had derived from the illicit behavior in question.

Volkswagen predicted that the development would have an immediate effect on its own financial performance and that of its subsidiary in 2018. "Taking special one-off effects from the fine order into account, the Audi corporation will underperform key financial targets from its forecast for the 2018 fiscal year significantly", Volkswagen wrote.

Porsche SE, the holding company of the Porsche-Piech family which owns the majority of publicly-listed Volkswagen Group shares, also expects net profits for this year to fall by around 900 euros to between 2,5 and 3.5 billion euros as a consequence.

Volkswagen Group, the world's largest carmaker by sales, admitted to manipulating exhaust system testing results in more than 10 million vehicles as early as September 2015 and has since had to pay more than four billion euros in legal settlements with customers there. In Germany, the Brunswick State Prosecution has already ordered the mother corporation to pay one billion euros in fine to plaintiffs during the summer in a similar case to the one now concluded at Audi.

Nevertheless, Justice Minister Katarina Barley has called for an overhaul of German law which would allow judicial authorities to punish corporations for criminal wrongdoing more effectively rather than just being able to prosecute individual members of staff.

Referring to the "dieselgate" scandal specifically, Barley argued that the government should create possibilities to take a more aggressive stance against businesses where fraud or corruption were "systemic" issues. (1 euro = 1.16 U.S. dollars)

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