VW: appears only small number of staff behind scandal

The CEO said he hopes to reach a deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency within weeks and make his first official visit in January to the United States, where Volkswagen’s emissions cheating first emerged.

Poetsch said the company had suspended nine managers suspected of being involved in the scandal and promised the company would beef up its internal oversights.

“We are not talking about a one-off mistake, but a whole chain of mistakes”, he said at a press conference in Germany that was live-streamed online and translated into English.

Mr Poetsch added: ‘No business justifies crossing legal and ethical boundaries. “Even though we can not prevent misconduct by individuals once and for all, in the future it will be very hard to bypass our processes”.

‘The last two and a half months have been unprecedented for the VW group.

Volkswagen blamed a small group of engineers for its massive emissions-test cheating scandal Thursday, telling reporters they came up with software to trick tailpipe tests after being unable to hit USA standards.

Poetsch said there are so far no indications that board members were directly involved, but said the company’s probe would be broad: “This is not only about direct but overall responsibility”. “Nothing will be swept under the carpet”.

To avoid a repeat, Volkswagen will start road testing its vehicles with third-party emissions verifications, as lab tests – so far the norm in the USA and Europe – had proved too easy to cheat.

Chief executive Matthias Mueller, brought in in September to steer Volkswagen out of the criss, said that the group was “currently doing everything it can to limit the effect the current situation has on its business performance”.

“As serious as this crisis is, it is also offering us an opportunity to drive much-need structural change and we will use that opportunity”, Mueller said. A slew of different investigations, both criminal and regulatory, followed in a number of different countries, all of which are still ongoing.

The press conference also heard how the scandal – said to affect up to 11million cars worldwide – has wiped out more than £7bn in the company’s market value. The software was installed on 11 million cars globally, about 500,000 of which in the U.S. He said about 2,000 employees have been ordered to preserve records for investigators.