NAN-F-59
Fraud
Stuttgart (Germany), March 22, 2017 (dpa/NAN) German prosecutors have widened their investigation into the emissions testing scandal that has engulfed Volkswagen to include a fraud probe of employees at the car maker Daimler, a report said on Friday.
“We are investigating known and unknown Daimler employees on suspicion of fraud and misleading advertising,” said a spokesman for the prosecution.
Daimler said they were in contact with prosecutors and other authorities in Stuttgart in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg near to the car maker’s headquarters.
The probe adds to the extensive list of investigations into the scandal, which was triggered in September 2015 when VW admitted that it had cheated on emission tests on more than 11 million diesel vehicles around the world.
The U.S. Department of Justice called on Daimler last year to launch an internal investigation into whether the emissions scandal impacted on its operations in the United States.
However, German motor transport authorities said in 2016 that they had not established any breach of existing laws in the emissions measurements also carried out last year.
Daimler declined to comment on its ongoing investigations.
In addition to VW and its luxury offshoot Audi, German auto supplier Bosch has also found itself the target of investigators along with car makers Renault and Fiat in France.
The Stuttgart prosecutors’s statement followed a report in the German weekly Die Zeit that Daimler employees may have manipulated some of the group’s diesel powered vehicles so as to enable them to pass emissions tests. (dpa/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Abdullahi Yusuf