Coverage: South Korean prosecutors raid Volkswagen’s office

Problems continue to pile on scandal-ridden, automaker Volkswagen.

On Friday, South Korea prosecutors raided the company’s local headquarters in connection with the country’s investigation into VW’s emissions case. Meanwhile, new internal memos and emails were released in Germany that indicate former CEO Martin Winterkorn knew about the emissions cheating earlier than he admitted to.

Hyunjoo Jin of Reuters had the day’s news:

South Korean prosecutors on Friday searched the local office of Volkswagen AG and sister firm Audi AG as part of a probe into an emissions case, a spokesman for the German carmakers’ local unit said, confirming media reports.

Volkswagen and Audi face a flurry of legal complaints globally after Volkswagen admitted in September to falsifying U.S. emissions tests on some of its diesel cars.

Yonhap News Agency said investigators from the Seoul Supreme Prosecutors’ Office raided the office and the house of an unidentified senior company official on Friday. They seized emails exchanged with headquarters and documents on emissions verification and vehicle certification, the report said.

A spokesman for Volkswagen Korea confirmed the raid but provided no other details, and reiterated that the company is cooperating with the probe.

Two officials with the prosecutors’ office were not immediately available for comment.

The country’s environment ministry last month filed a criminal complaint against the South Korean unit of Volkswagen/Audi and two company officials, saying that their vehicles do not meet permissible emission levels required by law.

Yonhap News Agency explained the penalties Volkswagen might face in South Korea:

In November, the ministry ordered Volkswagen to recall the vehicles with emissions found to be manipulated through the defeat device. The carmaker was also asked to provide data related to how it would maintain fuel efficiency even after removing the device.

Under South Korean law, those who do not abide by the recall order can be jailed for up to five years or fined a maximum of 30 million won (US$24,200).

Prosecutors said they are planning to summon related officials from the German carmaker after analyzing the confiscated articles.

Volkswagen Korea said that it will fully cooperate with the prosecution and the government, while vowing to work hard to recall the vehicles in question as quickly as possible. It earlier said that the recall process could start within the first half of this year.

“We have been working with the environment ministry since our engineers recently visited it to explain how to fix the cited problems,” a Volkswagen Korea official said. “Our top priority is to minimize inconvenience of our customers by recalling the vehicles as quickly as possible.”

Back in Germany trouble continues to mount at the company’s headquarters, with the release of damming internal memos, reports Jack Ewing of The New York Times:

Volkswagen internal memos and emails suggest that company executives pursued a strategy of delay and obfuscation with United States regulators after being confronted in early 2014 with evidence that VW diesel vehicles were emitting far more pollutants than allowed.

The documents, first reported on by the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag and since reviewed by The New York Times, could raise the penalties for Volkswagen based on laws requiring public disclosure of problems with potential to affect a company’s stock price. They indicate that top managers knew sooner than they have acknowledged that they could not bring tainted vehicles into compliance with air-quality rules, but led federal and California officials to believe otherwise.

The documents also raise the possibility that Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen’s chief executive at the time, knew of possible emissions cheating by the company sooner than he has said.

According to the documents reviewed by The Times, a confidant of Mr. Winterkorn wrote to him in May 2014, warning that regulators might accuse the carmaker of using a so-called defeat device — software that recognized when the car was being tested for emissions and activated pollution-control equipment. At other times, the cars produced up to 35 times the allowed amount of nitrogen oxide emissions, which are linked to lung ailments and premature deaths.

It was not until last September, more than a year after the letter of warning to Mr. Winterkorn, that Volkswagen admitted publicly that 11 million diesel vehicles, including about 480,000 Volkswagen cars in the United States, were equipped with defeat devices. The number of cars in the United States has since risen to include about 100,000 Audi and Porsche cars with diesel engines.