Volkswagen executive to plead guilty in diesel emissions fraud case

Oliver Schmidt, a former top emissions compliance executive for Volkswagen

A Volkswagen executive accused of helping to cover up the automaker’s diesel emissions fraud has agreed to plead guilty in federal court next week, a development that could bolster the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute individuals involved in the scandal. On Tuesday, lawyers for the executive, Oliver Schmidt, a German who was arrested in Miami in January, told a judge for the Eastern District of Michigan that their client had decided to enter a guilty plea at a hearing scheduled for Aug. 4.
Mr. Schmidt, 48, former head of Volkswagen’s environmental and engineering center in Auburn Hills, Mich., has been accused of knowingly providing false information to American regulators who became suspicious about the emissions of Volkswagen diesel vehicles in early 2014. The following year, Volkswagen admitted that it had rigged diesel models with software — known as a defeat device — that enabled the vehicles to pass emissions tests even though the vehicles were spewing far more pollutants outside testing labs. More than 11 million cars worldwide were equipped with the software, including 600,000 in the United States. Volkswagen later pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act, customs violations and obstruction of justice.
The automaker has also agreed to pay $4.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties in the case brought by the Justice Department — part of $22 billion in settlements and fines Volkswagen is paying out in the United States, making it one of the costliest corporate scandals in history. Mr. Schmidt’s cooperation would be a coup for the Justice Department’s case against Volkswagen. Mr. Schmidt is one of eight former Volkswagen executives who have been charged in the United States. The others are in Germany, and almost all are unlikely to face trials in the United States because Germany does not extradite its citizens.
Volkswagen declined to comment on Mr. Schmidt’s plea agreement but said in a statement that it “continues to cooperate with investigations by the Department of Justice into the conduct of individuals.”
Mr. Schmidt is facing 11 felony counts and a maximum sentence of 169 years in prison. It is unclear to which charges he will plead guilty. Both his attorney, David DuMouchel, and a spokeswoman for the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan declined to comment. It is also unclear if he will agree to cooperate with prosecutors as a condition of his plea, although that is typical in such agreements.

Source: NY Times