Investigators raid Volkswagen offices

German police raided the headquarters of Volkswagen on Thursday as part of an investigation into the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal. They targeted several Volkswagen office building and a handful of private residences in Wolfsburg in an effort to find documents and storage devices related to the scandal.

“The American people, the EPA and its counterparts around the world have been defrauded by Volkswagen”, she said.

A spokesman said it was “also in the interest of Volkswagen” for there to be “a prompt and thorough explanation” of the scandal. Volkswagen is facing lawsuits and government probes around the world after saying the rigged engines may have been installed in a few 11 million vehicles worldwide.

Volkswagen’s new chief Matthias Mueller has said four employees have been suspended over the deception, adding however that he did not believe that top management could have been aware of the scam.

Nearly three weeks after it confessed publicly to rigging USA emissions tests, Europe’s largest carmaker is under huge pressure to identify those responsible, fix affected vehicles and clarify exactly how and where the cheating happened. It has also hired US law firm Jones Day to conduct an external inquiry.

“It is clear that the company must clear this up – the more offensively it does so, the better”, Gabriel said.

The company, controlled by the Piech-Porsche clan, is not drawing on outside restructuring experts to help with its plans for a new company structure, one source close to the board said.

Gabriel said it is important to send the message across that the employees should not pay the price for the “criminal behavior by managers”.

VW was able to fool the EPA because the agency only tested the cars on treadmill-like devices called dynamometers and didn’t use portable test equipment on real roads.

Minister Alexander Dobrindt spoke Wednesday evening after the automaker replied to German authorities’ demand to present a timetable for a solution.

Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Thursday that Volkswagen’s manipulation software was switched on in Europe, citing a company spokesman.