The Volkswagen scandal is spreading. Former CEO Martin Winter grain he collects a super severance pay but is not yet out of trouble: in fact today is the news of the opening of an investigation by the judges of Lower Saxony against the former managing director. The investigation will focus on "allegations of fraud in the sale of cars with manipulated emissions data," the prosecutor said.
Everything always starts from the case that overwhelmed the German company a few days ago, which ended up in the crosshairs due to the rigged tests on emissions, which is now also contaminating other brands. There are over 2,1 million, in fact, in the world Audi equipped with able to rig emissions tests. A not insignificant number, announced by the spokesman Juergen de Graeve, which a Bloomberg explained how the models in question are A1, A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3, Q5.
Of the total number of cars indicted, over 1,4 million were sold in Western Europe alone (577 in Germany). That the luxury brand of the Volkswagen Group was embroiled in the Dieselgate is not an absolute novelty, while the extent of the involvement and the admission of guilt of the top management of the German company is, grappling with a scandal from proportions and with consequences that are still not totally predictable.
And in the meantime i consumers they start to rebel. The first class action against Volkswagen has started in the United States. To move it – reports l'Handelsblatt – is a pension fund of Michigan who has decided to represent in court a number of Investors, who believe they have paid artificially inflated prices to invest in Volkswagen given levels of exhaust gas emission manipulated. And to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in doing so. The newspaper also talks about 80 causes of the consumers US against the German automaker.
Initiatives that can also be replicated in Italy? "It's possible, it can't be predicted, it's certainly possible," said the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Graziano Delrium, who yesterday announced a government investigation: “We want to know how many and which cars sold in Italy have this device and this software installed. It is of little use now to say, as Volkswagen does, that the new engines are in order. A methodology has been used which also deceives the authorities who have to carry out the checks. We are indignant: in addition to having been a very serious scam and deception, here we risk breaking the trust between producers and citizens".
