No sympathy for sample-declaring action
In 2015 the diesel scandal broke through the Wolfsburg car manufacturer Volkswagen. Since then, hardly a week has passed in which there have been no new headlines about it, even about other manufacturers. Now the carmaker has announced how high the costs have been so far.
VW board member Hiltrud Werner told the Handelsblatt that legal costs alone are in the three-digit billion range. According to her, the bottom line of the scandal was 28 billion euros.
Lawyer’s fees will continue to rise
And costs could rise even further this year. In Germany alone, hundreds of thousands of people have joined a model indictment. They want to receive damages for their vehicles affected by the exhaust scandal. The lawsuits relate not only to the VW brand, but also to Audi, Skoda and Seat. The lawyer’s fees in particular are therefore likely to continue to rise. Werner said that she expected “a year full of work for our lawyers and the law firms we have mandated”.
However, the manager did not show understanding for the class action lawsuit: “From our point of view, there is no legal basis for customer lawsuits. She went on to explain to the Handelsblatt: “In our opinion, the clients have suffered neither losses nor damages. The vehicles are safe and ready to drive”.
11 million Volkswagen cars affected
The scandal in the USA began in autumn 2015. At that time, Volkswagen admitted to the US authorities that it had installed manipulated software in vehicles. This affected around eleven million diesel-powered cars worldwide. The company wanted to falsify the emission values of the cars by manipulating them.
Two years ago, when Werner took over the area of law and integrity, she said: “We have to take back the old VW arrogance. We must lower our trousers and not gloss over anything.”
Perhaps the costs of billions have changed the view of the manager’s diesel scandal.