The Paris Prosecutor’s Office requested at the end of February a trial for deception in the Dieselgate scandal against Volkswagen, accused since June 2021 in this case, AFP learned on Friday, March 21 near the file.
The Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that its public health center requested on February 24 the derivation to the Volkswagen Criminal Court for deception, a crime that makes a fine of 375,000 euros or 10% of the billing.
The facts about the manufacturer, which are executed between 2009 and 2016, are related to almost a million diesel vehicles of the EA189 TDI 1.2, 1.6 and 2 liters of Volkswagen, Volkswagen Utility, Seat, Audi, Skoda.
“Dangerous for human health”
It is suspected that Volkswagen is suspected that the public prosecutor has “commercialized vehicles equipped with a complex device that allows detecting the phases of the approval test and systematically improve during these procedures the performance of the vehicle emission control system to meet the regulatory ceiling in this area and thus obtain its approval.”
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, “in a real traffic situation, the established device led to a strongly degraded operation of the displacement bodies and resulted in the frequent surplus of the regulatory threshold for nitrogen oxides emissions” set at European level.
These facts “had the consequence of making the use of dangerous products for humans or animals” by increasing production by nitrogen oxide vehicles, air pollutants (nitrogen oxides) hazardous for human health.
In this file for which investigations have been closed since August 2022, the final decision on a trial now returns to the investigating judge.
11 million diesel vehicles
After the accusations of the American agency of American, Volkswagen had recognized in the fall of 2015 that he had equipped 11 million of his diesel vehicles with software capable of hiding emissions sometimes exceeding up to 40 times the authorized standards.
In March 2023, the manufacturer had indicated “to dispute the merits of (these) accusations of aggravated deception (…) in France.”
He believed that “French consumers have not suffered any compensable damage related to the purchase of a VW vehicle.”
Above all, the manufacturer considers that the facts have already been sanctioned by German justice in 2018, a decision that had led to the payment of a fine of one billion euros.
In addition to the German manufacturer, Renault, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat-Chrysler, they were also accused in mid-2010 in France for “deception in a product that resulted in the health of humans or animals.”
Since 2015, Volkswagen has had to pay around 30 billion euros in reimbursements, compensation and legal costs, mainly in the United States, where the group declared fraud and obstruction to justice.
Source: BFM TV
