VW: Only Small Group of Employees Responsible for Scandal

“We are relentlessly searching for those responsible for what happened and you may rest assured we will bring these persons to account”, said Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch at a news conference in Germany.

“We are talking here not about a one-off mistake but a chain of errors”, he said, adding: “Based on what we know today, it was a very limited group which acted irresponsibly”.

Upon learning of the emissions cheating, the automaker suspended nine of its managers who Potsch says were “possibly involved in the manipulations”.

Chief Executive Matthias Mueller and Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch will publish intermediate results from the inquiries at 1000 GMT on Thursday.

A separate investigation into cars which may have been sold with the wrong fuel consumption and Carbon dioxide level rates has now also nearly concluded. “The main problem there was that responsibilities were not sufficiently clear”, Poetsch told reporters. “They said it started with the decision to launch this major diesel auto campaign in the U.S. But VW developers couldn’t figure how to meet U.S. emissions standards within the timeline and budget they’d been given, so they developed the software defeat device”. Overall, the situation is not dramatic, but, as was to be expected, it’s tense. The company also announced that it would be implementing a new corporate structure across the group as early as 2017.

“We will not allow the crisis to paralyze us”, Mueller said. Cooperation with those authorities was described as “excellent”. The company will not be considering the sale of any units and will not raise money. Mueller and Poetsch said it was still too soon to pinpoint exactly who were the masterminds behind the scam. “I will look ahead optimistically and confidently”.

Little has emerged so far from those probes, but VW has said that around 50 employees have come forward so far to testify. “Although the current situation is serious, this company will not be broken by it”, he said.

VW did say that all future admissions tests will be evaluated externally and independently. The revelation has left the company facing $18 billion in fines from American regulators and prompted the resignation of CEO Martin Winterkorn. Sales in the US fell almost 25 percent in November, the first month to show the full impact of the scandal.

Although Volkswagen vowed to begin its massive recall to make 11 million faulty diesel vehicles in Europe to comply with emissions regulations in January, while aiming to end the undertaking in December, it has yet to roll out similar plans for the United States.

The cost of buying back affected US vehicles could total as much as $9.4 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.