Volkswagen officials covered up diesel cheating, says NY lawsuit

Senior executives from Volkswagen, including current chief executive Matthias Muller, covered up evidence that the German car manufacturer had cheated on US diesel emissions tests for years, New York state accused on Tuesday in a civil lawsuit against the company.

As project manager at Audi in 2006, Mr Muller was made aware of the difficulty company engineers faced in getting some of the brand’s diesel cars to comply with strict US rules on emissions according to the suit filed by Eric Schneiderman. It is unclear whether he actually knew about the emission-cheating device however.

New York is one of three states that are bringing environmental damage cases to the automaker, as well as Maryland and Massachusetts.

Volkswagen admitted last year to having used sophisticated software to cheat emissions tests. It is currently being investigated by the US Department of Justice as well as the civil cases. It had promised to make €16.2bn available to meet the costs of the scandal.

Muller's predecessor as CEO of the company is also said to have known about the difficulty in being able to control the car's emissions, according to the suit.

“In or around July 2006, the issue … reached the attention of Martin Winterkorn, then the CEO of Audi AG (and later of the group parent company, Volkswagen AG), as well as ‘H. Müller’, which another Audi executive testified is a reference to Matthias Müller, then the head of project management for Audi AG and now Mr Winterkorn’s successor as CEO of Volkswagen AG,” it says.

“They concluded, in other words, that breaking the law and risking the imposition of fines was an acceptable cost of doing business,” adds the suit.