Renault raided by French emissions investigators

An investigation has been launched in France into emissions testing fraud at Renault, the company admitted on Thursday after its shares had been sent skidding 20%.

Agents from France's Economy Ministry seized computers used by several Renault directors as part of an apparent probe into emissions testing, according to unions cited by Agence France-Presse.

Renault later confirmed the police raid at its sites in Lardy, Guyancourt and its headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, and said in the emailed statement that it was cooperating with the investigation.

"Agents from the (anti-fraud unit) DGCCRF intervened in various Renault sites last Thursday," the CGT Renault union said earlier, adding that the probe was "linked to the consequences of the Volkswagen rigged-engines affair".

Following VW's emissions scandal, Renault said in December it would invest €50m to lift emissions standards of its cars up to required levels.

On Thursday it said fraud investigators decided to carry out extra checks on parts and in factories, but added that tests underway on emissions technology did not show any sign of the sort of 'defeat mechanism' that VW was found to have used.

In November, German environmental agency Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) claimed some Renault-Nissan diesel cars were exceeding Eurpean NOx limits by up to twenty-five times, thought Renault and other carmakers similarly accused called the tests into question and denied use of emissions fixing devices.

Jürgen Resch, the DUH chief, was quoted as saying that the tests carried out by the University of Applied Sciences in Bern, Switzerland, “show a certain pattern. Only when the car was prepared in a certain way for next day’s test, the car passed with flying colors. Any deviations of the reconditioning resulted in emissions which we had never measured that high.”