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面對(duì)柴油門(mén)事件,大眾在歐美的待遇為何如此懸殊|深度報(bào)道

面對(duì)柴油門(mén)事件,大眾在歐美的待遇為何如此懸殊|深度報(bào)道

Roger Parloff 2018-02-12
大眾因排放丑聞在美國(guó)遭到重罰,但在歐洲卻分文未付。這家德國(guó)汽車(chē)制造商的高管有可能會(huì)面臨牢獄之災(zāi)嗎?

本文由《財(cái)富》與非盈利調(diào)查新聞機(jī)構(gòu)ProPublica共同撰寫(xiě)。

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2013-15年的大眾甲殼蟲(chóng)車(chē)型使用了TDI技術(shù),是帶有作弊軟件的15款車(chē)型之一。Courtesy of VW

12月6日,帶著手銬和腳鏈的前大眾工程師奧利弗·施密特被帶到了底特律聯(lián)邦法院。他穿著一件血紅色的套頭衫,與往常一樣剃著光頭,他深陷的雙眼似乎在問(wèn),我為什么會(huì)落到這個(gè)地步?就在坐在第二排的施密特妻子強(qiáng)忍著不讓眼淚流下來(lái)時(shí),美國(guó)地方法官肖恩·科克斯宣布判處施密特7年監(jiān)禁,如果放在施密特的祖國(guó)德國(guó),這將是有史以來(lái)最為嚴(yán)厲的白領(lǐng)犯罪判罰之一。

施密特因其在大眾“柴油門(mén)”丑聞而受到懲罰,該丑聞是歷史上最明目張膽的企業(yè)欺詐之一。然而他的宣判并沒(méi)有什么凈化作用,在科克斯法官看來(lái)尤為如此,他有時(shí)對(duì)做出這一判決感到很痛苦。他對(duì)施密特懷有歉意地說(shuō)道,有時(shí)候,他的工作要求他監(jiān)禁那些“犯有重大決策錯(cuò)誤的好人”。

所有人都知道,施密特只是一個(gè)從犯,而他的判決只是幫某人頂罪而已。科克斯法官此言針對(duì)的是德國(guó)的某些人,他們超出了美國(guó)檢察官的審查權(quán)限,因?yàn)榈聡?guó)通常不會(huì)將其公民引渡至歐盟境外的地方受審。最為重要的是,底特律法院也因馬丁·文德恩這位幕后人的缺席而感到困擾。這位大眾首席執(zhí)行官的任職期限貫穿欺詐事件的始末。雖然他的名字在法庭上僅提到過(guò)兩次,但他的陰云卻始終籠罩著整個(gè)聽(tīng)證會(huì)。

丑聞的大概內(nèi)容大家都很清楚。在近10年的時(shí)間中,從2006年-2015年9月,大眾確定了其一系列車(chē)型的美國(guó)銷(xiāo)售策略,旨在讓公司超越對(duì)手豐田,成為全球排名第一的汽車(chē)制造商,結(jié)果卻成了一場(chǎng)騙局。這些車(chē)被冠以“清潔柴油”車(chē)型的美名。公司大眾、奧迪和保時(shí)捷品牌在美國(guó)共銷(xiāo)售了約58萬(wàn)輛這類(lèi)轎車(chē)、SUV和跨界車(chē)。借助鋪天蓋地的宣傳攻勢(shì),包括超級(jí)碗廣告,大眾營(yíng)造了一個(gè)環(huán)保主義夢(mèng)想:自家的車(chē)輛既有高性能,也具備出色的油耗和排放指標(biāo),它是如此之環(huán)保,完全可以與豐田普銳斯這類(lèi)混合動(dòng)力車(chē)相媲美。

但這只不過(guò)是由軟件構(gòu)筑的泡影罷了。根據(jù)設(shè)置,大眾柴油車(chē)的尾氣控制設(shè)備會(huì)在車(chē)輛脫離監(jiān)管方測(cè)試臺(tái)時(shí)自動(dòng)關(guān)閉,此時(shí),排氣管會(huì)向大氣中排放兩種超過(guò)法定濃度的兩種氮氧化合物(統(tǒng)稱(chēng)NOx),可引發(fā)霧霾、呼吸道疾病和夭折。

最初,大眾堅(jiān)決認(rèn)為造假行為源于公司的一群素質(zhì)低劣的工程師。但一段時(shí)間之后,公司不動(dòng)聲色地放棄了這一主張,轉(zhuǎn)而專(zhuān)注于保護(hù)一小部分高管。這一犯罪行為最初的情形可能是:少數(shù)工程師害怕向焦慮的高管承認(rèn),自己已經(jīng)無(wú)法在實(shí)現(xiàn)公司目標(biāo)的同時(shí)滿足法律的要求。

在過(guò)去兩年中,美國(guó)和德國(guó)檢方一直都在追蹤那些知曉這一密謀的人士,而且已經(jīng)查出了40多名涉案人員,這些人員至少來(lái)自于4個(gè)城市,分屬于三個(gè)大眾品牌以及汽車(chē)技術(shù)供應(yīng)商羅伯特博世。一些司法部門(mén)的官員正試圖推行一項(xiàng)可能具有轟動(dòng)效應(yīng)的新舉措,即起訴大眾前任首席執(zhí)行官。然而,這類(lèi)舉措基本上沒(méi)有什么實(shí)質(zhì)性的意義,因?yàn)槊绹?guó)與德國(guó)之間沒(méi)有達(dá)成引渡協(xié)議,但它會(huì)釋放這樣一個(gè)信號(hào):這一欺詐行為的性質(zhì)十分惡劣,而且源自于大眾的高層。

同時(shí),它也會(huì)凸顯兩個(gè)不同地區(qū)在懲罰方面的巨大反差。美國(guó)當(dāng)局對(duì)大眾在美銷(xiāo)售的58萬(wàn)輛造假柴油車(chē)做出的罰款、處罰和賠償共計(jì)達(dá)到了250億美元。在歐洲,雖然大眾銷(xiāo)售了800萬(wàn)輛問(wèn)題柴油車(chē),但卻沒(méi)有收到任何國(guó)家的政府所開(kāi)出的罰單。

毫無(wú)疑問(wèn),奧利弗·施密特是有罪的。他承認(rèn)參與了事實(shí)真相的掩蓋。然而,他與幕后主謀還有很大的差距。施密特聲稱(chēng),自己直到2015年6月才知曉軟件作弊一事,然而3個(gè)月后,這一長(zhǎng)達(dá)十年的陰謀便畫(huà)上了句號(hào)。不過(guò),他承認(rèn)自己曾在2013年“懷疑”過(guò)此事。

48歲的施密特多年來(lái)一直是大眾與美國(guó)環(huán)保當(dāng)局的主要聯(lián)系人。他最近才升遷公司的中層管理人員(年薪約17萬(wàn)美金),也就是在這個(gè)時(shí)候參與了真相的掩蓋。他的一切都說(shuō)明他將成為一位與車(chē)打交道的商人。他出生于大眾占主導(dǎo)地位的下薩克森州,大眾60萬(wàn)名員工當(dāng)中有11萬(wàn)在那里工作。施密特于1997年退伍之后便直接加入了大眾。其律師向法官轉(zhuǎn)交了50封私人信件,這些信件都將其描述為一位忠誠(chéng)、關(guān)愛(ài)他人的兒子、兄弟、丈夫、叔叔和朋友??瓶怂狗ü俦硎?,“我從來(lái)沒(méi)有看到過(guò)這么多的證明信?!睋?jù)信中描述,他在業(yè)余時(shí)間喜歡收集以前的軌道賽車(chē)套裝,并重新組裝經(jīng)典的大眾甲殼蟲(chóng)。在施密特2010年結(jié)婚時(shí),他和妻子(妻子是一名汽車(chē)工程師)在朋友邁阿密的大眾經(jīng)銷(xiāo)店展示廳中舉行了婚禮。施密特是一位異常忠誠(chéng)的人,一生都獻(xiàn)給了大眾。

科克斯法官在聽(tīng)證會(huì)上解釋說(shuō),施密特的判決旨在進(jìn)一步加強(qiáng)“一般性威懾力”。換句話說(shuō)來(lái)說(shuō),其目的在于給其他的企業(yè)高管提個(gè)醒:聽(tīng)從非法的命令不能作為開(kāi)脫的理由。顯然,這一判決也體現(xiàn)了法官的無(wú)奈。

施密特承認(rèn)自己有罪,科克斯法官對(duì)他說(shuō),“這一判決是為了震懾高管和董事會(huì)”。科克斯指的是文德恩,后者不僅在2007年便開(kāi)始擔(dān)任首席執(zhí)行官(直到2015年才因丑聞辭職),同時(shí)還是公司管理委員會(huì)的主席。施密特律師和檢察官認(rèn)可的眾多證據(jù)顯示,施密特和另一名員工曾在2015年7月27日向文德恩和其他高管做過(guò)匯報(bào)。

文德恩是一位臭名昭著的微觀管理者。他因攜帶測(cè)微計(jì)而出名,這樣,他便可以按照百分之一毫米的精確度來(lái)測(cè)量大眾的零部件和公差。同時(shí),他在執(zhí)行紀(jì)律方面達(dá)到了專(zhuān)橫無(wú)理的地步。當(dāng)時(shí),他也是德國(guó)薪資最高的首席執(zhí)行官,去年的收入達(dá)到了1860萬(wàn)美元,是施密特的100倍。

施密特和一名同事被叫到文德恩眼前,以幫助解決這一危機(jī)。美國(guó)監(jiān)管當(dāng)局已采取激進(jìn)的舉措,禁止銷(xiāo)售大眾2016年柴油車(chē)車(chē)型。由于這一舉措對(duì)于公司的美國(guó)戰(zhàn)略有著至關(guān)重要的影響,這位首席執(zhí)行官希望施密特解釋到底都發(fā)生了什么事情。施密特回答道,加州空氣資源委員會(huì)和美國(guó)環(huán)保局發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)嚴(yán)重的異常情況:大眾的清潔柴油車(chē)在實(shí)驗(yàn)室中符合NOx的排放標(biāo)準(zhǔn),但一旦到了公路上,車(chē)輛尾氣中NOx的濃度最高可超出法律上限40倍。出于對(duì)大眾一年多以來(lái)回避問(wèn)題和妨礙調(diào)查的不滿,監(jiān)管當(dāng)局決定禁止銷(xiāo)售大眾2016年柴油車(chē)型,直到大眾找到解決之道。

2015年7月與文德恩的會(huì)議對(duì)法律訴訟所稱(chēng)的不當(dāng)行為進(jìn)行了詳細(xì)的分析。施密特的判決備忘錄寫(xiě)道,“一名未遭到指控的同謀提供了有關(guān)作弊裝置的一些技術(shù)信息?!保ā白鞅籽b置”一詞指的是讓大眾柴油車(chē)在排放測(cè)試中作弊的軟件。)施密特曾警告與會(huì)人員,“如果監(jiān)管當(dāng)局發(fā)現(xiàn)了這一作弊行為,可能會(huì)給公司帶來(lái)嚴(yán)重的后果”。在FBI探員向施密特發(fā)起訴訟的書(shū)面陳述中寫(xiě)道,施密特在其演示中的一頁(yè)幻燈片中提到了這一令人不安的可能后果——“指控?”

檢察官本杰明·辛格在判決時(shí)對(duì)科克斯法官說(shuō),施密特和其同事以準(zhǔn)確無(wú)誤的語(yǔ)言向參會(huì)人員解釋了大眾一直在作弊以及公司如何作弊。(檢察官和施密特的律師大衛(wèi)·杜莫切爾拒絕接受采訪。)

如果人們相信檢察官和施密特在說(shuō)真話,也就是文德恩在會(huì)面時(shí)確實(shí)得知了大眾作弊的信息,那么這位首席執(zhí)行官所采取的后續(xù)行動(dòng)看起來(lái)有欲蓋彌彰的嫌疑。文德恩并未下令通知當(dāng)局有關(guān)大眾作弊的事情,或發(fā)起調(diào)查以弄清事實(shí)真相。

反而,他交給了施密特一個(gè)任務(wù):勸說(shuō)美國(guó)監(jiān)管方允許銷(xiāo)售大眾2016年柴油車(chē)型。

施密特的判決備忘錄寫(xiě)道,文德恩“授命施密特先生與他在美國(guó)期間結(jié)識(shí)的加州空氣資源委員會(huì)高級(jí)別官員進(jìn)行非正式會(huì)面?!盕BI探員在其書(shū)面陳述中寫(xiě)道,“大眾高管并沒(méi)有建議向美國(guó)監(jiān)管方披露作弊裝置,而是授權(quán)繼續(xù)隱瞞真相?!?。

施密特的備忘錄稱(chēng),在出發(fā)前往美國(guó)之前,施密特就“與加州空氣資源委員會(huì)會(huì)面期間打算使用的說(shuō)辭征求了意見(jiàn)并獲得批準(zhǔn)”。備忘錄中寫(xiě)道,這一說(shuō)辭至少得到了文德恩以下四名高管的批準(zhǔn),而且“施密特先生得到指示,不得向美國(guó)方面透露作弊裝置的信息或存在任何有意的作弊行為。”

2015年8月,施密特從德國(guó)飛到密歇根,并用謊言連續(xù)蒙騙了兩名加州空氣資源委員會(huì)官員。他通過(guò)郵件向德國(guó)老板和其他10名“高級(jí)別人員”匯報(bào)了“進(jìn)展詳情”,并表示“他一直都在使用——按照施密特自己的話來(lái)說(shuō)——大眾所選擇的謊言和騙術(shù)?!?,檢察官辛格說(shuō)道。

最終,另一名已無(wú)法容忍這種欺騙行徑的大眾工程師拋棄了這些說(shuō)辭,并于8月19日的一次會(huì)面中向加州空氣資源委員會(huì)交代了事實(shí)真相。大眾的一名總監(jiān)于9月3日正式向監(jiān)管方承認(rèn)使用了作弊裝置,隨后,美國(guó)環(huán)保局和加州空氣資源委員會(huì)迫使大眾于2015年9月18日向公眾披露了真相。

文德恩于5日后離任,稱(chēng)自己對(duì)“過(guò)去幾天”所發(fā)生的事情感到“震驚”,并表示他“本人對(duì)這些不當(dāng)行為一無(wú)所知?!惫颈O(jiān)事委員會(huì)同一日宣布其沒(méi)有過(guò)錯(cuò),并稱(chēng)文德恩“對(duì)于操縱排放數(shù)據(jù)一事毫不知情?!痹?017年1月的德國(guó)國(guó)會(huì)聽(tīng)證會(huì)上,文德恩堅(jiān)決表示,自己在丑聞公之于眾之前從未聽(tīng)說(shuō)過(guò)“作弊裝置”一詞。他在當(dāng)天的四個(gè)場(chǎng)合中曾拒絕回答議員的問(wèn)題,理由是德國(guó)檢方正在對(duì)其進(jìn)行刑事調(diào)查。

到目前為止,施密特在底特律的判決是這位前首席執(zhí)行官與美國(guó)刑事司法距離最近的一次接觸。在這一陰謀曝光27個(gè)月之后,文德恩仍未在美國(guó)或德國(guó)受到任何罪名指控。(他的美國(guó)律師拒絕就此文置評(píng))

他以后會(huì)嗎?是否會(huì)有比施密特位置更高的高管來(lái)承擔(dān)這一重罪?

這些問(wèn)題的答案仍不甚明朗。據(jù)兩名知情人士透露,雖然美國(guó)檢方希望起訴文德恩,但并未收到司法部高官的批準(zhǔn)。

這看起來(lái)似乎是邁出了巨大的一步。然而事實(shí)在于,在美國(guó)對(duì)文德恩或其他大眾高管的起訴正在逐漸失去其實(shí)際意義,原因很簡(jiǎn)單,檢方無(wú)法接觸到本案的大多數(shù)關(guān)鍵人物。文德恩自丑聞爆發(fā)之后就再未踏入美國(guó)一步,而且在施密特獲得重刑之后,他也不大可能在近期前往美國(guó)。

在美國(guó)受到指控的8名工程師中,只有施密特和詹姆士·梁(這名非總監(jiān)級(jí)人員在去年8月被判處40個(gè)月的監(jiān)禁),而實(shí)際上在美國(guó),只有一名人員——奧迪引擎開(kāi)發(fā)總監(jiān)扎切歐·帕米歐——恰好是一名可以引渡的意大利籍人士。

這意味著司法焦點(diǎn)將轉(zhuǎn)移至德國(guó)。在那里,的確有三組檢方正在醞釀開(kāi)展合適的行動(dòng)。 代表下薩克森州(母公司VW AG和其大眾品牌乘用車(chē)部門(mén)總部所在地)的布倫瑞克當(dāng)局表示,他們正在就與柴油門(mén)相關(guān)的造假案件調(diào)查39名人士,其中一名涉嫌阻礙司法調(diào)查,三明涉嫌金融市場(chǎng)操控(在這一案件中意味著未能及時(shí)向股東披露這一即將爆發(fā)的危機(jī))。在慕尼黑,巴伐利亞檢方正在調(diào)查大眾奧迪部門(mén)(總部位于英戈?duì)柺┧兀?3名人士,他們涉嫌欺詐和虛假?gòu)V告。在斯圖加特,三名高管因涉嫌市場(chǎng)操控而正在接受調(diào)查。

兩次市場(chǎng)操縱調(diào)查主要針對(duì)文德恩和三名大眾現(xiàn)任資深高管。例如,布倫瑞克檢方正在調(diào)查監(jiān)管理事會(huì)董事長(zhǎng)漢斯·珀奇(在丑聞爆發(fā)之前擔(dān)任首席財(cái)務(wù)官)以及現(xiàn)任大眾品牌經(jīng)理赫伯特·戴斯,而斯圖加特當(dāng)局在調(diào)查珀奇和現(xiàn)任首席執(zhí)行官馬希爾斯·穆勒。(大眾拒絕就本文公開(kāi)置評(píng),而是提供了一份書(shū)面聲明,并聲稱(chēng)其高管完全遵守披露法。)

然而,調(diào)查的進(jìn)展異常緩慢。目前僅有兩名德國(guó)人被逮捕。一位是帕米歐,另一位是沃爾夫?qū)す?,曾先后?dān)任奧迪、大眾和保時(shí)捷的高級(jí)主管。德國(guó)檢方并未確認(rèn)已扣留個(gè)人的身份以及指控罪名,但該辦公室稱(chēng),慕尼黑檢方的關(guān)注點(diǎn)在于欺詐和虛假?gòu)V告。

在德國(guó),刑事訴訟并不多見(jiàn),定罪或長(zhǎng)期監(jiān)禁就更少見(jiàn)了。該國(guó)的法律設(shè)置了很多巨大的障礙。首先,公司不存在刑事責(zé)任。沒(méi)有法律禁止犯罪預(yù)謀,沒(méi)有相關(guān)的清潔空氣刑法,也沒(méi)有針對(duì)欺騙監(jiān)管方或調(diào)查人員的法律。(柏林自由大學(xué)法學(xué)教授卡斯滕·孟森稱(chēng),后者實(shí)際上受到德國(guó)沉默權(quán)強(qiáng)有力的保護(hù)。)檢方獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)和將犯罪者轉(zhuǎn)化為公訴方證人的手段要弱于其同僚美國(guó)檢方,而且即便刑法的部分內(nèi)容有這方面的規(guī)定——可逮捕欺騙其他人的個(gè)人,但也不適用于本案中所出現(xiàn)的企業(yè)密謀。

這兩個(gè)國(guó)家的公司和其客戶所面臨的結(jié)果是迥然不同的。在美國(guó),司法體系很快給出了結(jié)果。在嚴(yán)厲的企業(yè)刑事制裁、靈活嚴(yán)苛的刑法和精簡(jiǎn)的消費(fèi)者集體訴訟程序面前,大眾很快低下了頭。在9個(gè)月內(nèi)(法律界的超高速),大眾同意就涉案的2.0排量轎車(chē)向消費(fèi)者以及聯(lián)邦和州相關(guān)部門(mén)支付約150億美元的民事賠償和補(bǔ)償,而且隨著該案件的涉及范圍擴(kuò)大至3.0排量的車(chē)輛,再加上刑事罰款和處罰,總金額已躥升至250多億美元。大眾已經(jīng)回購(gòu)和修理了大部分涉案車(chē)輛,而且客戶也因此獲得了每輛車(chē)數(shù)千美元的賠償,用于彌補(bǔ)其各類(lèi)損失,包括欺騙和轉(zhuǎn)售價(jià)值的降低。面對(duì)陰謀、欺詐、制造虛假聲明和妨礙司法的聯(lián)邦刑事訴訟,大眾于4月承認(rèn)有罪。

大眾委托Jones Day律師事務(wù)所開(kāi)展了一項(xiàng)調(diào)查,涉及700多個(gè)采訪,并搜集了1億多份文件,大眾為美國(guó)檢方提供了隨意獲取這一調(diào)查結(jié)果的權(quán)限。(大眾稱(chēng),這一調(diào)查仍在開(kāi)展當(dāng)中。)大眾還幫助恢復(fù)了供法庭使用的數(shù)千頁(yè)的文件,這些文件在陰謀泄漏前夕被眾多大眾雇員所刪除。作為交換,美國(guó)檢方對(duì)大眾的配合表示首肯,免去了20%的刑事罰金,但即便在減少之后,這一數(shù)字依然高達(dá)28億美元。

在加拿大,公司也支付了賠償,包括針對(duì)1月份剛剛抵達(dá)的3.0升車(chē)輛所支付的2.9億美元。在韓國(guó),大眾也付出了慘痛的代價(jià),公司不僅支付了天額罰金,其當(dāng)?shù)氐拇蟊姾蛫W迪官員也遭到了刑事訴訟,其中一名被判處18個(gè)月監(jiān)禁,如今正在服刑。

然而在德國(guó)和歐洲,事情卻完全不一樣。大眾沒(méi)有向任何客戶支付賠償。在公司的決策之地以及決策者所在地德國(guó),大眾沒(méi)有受到任何刑事或行政罰款或處罰。

On Dec. 6, former Volkswagen engineer Oliver Schmidt was led into a federal courtroom in Detroit in handcuffs and leg irons. He was wearing a blood-red jumpsuit, his head shaved, as it always is, and his deep-set eyes seemed to ask, how did I get here? As Schmidt’s wife tried to suppress tears in a second-row pew, U.S. District Judge Sean Cox sentenced him to what, had it been imposed in Schmidt’s native Germany, would rank among the harshest white-collar sentences ever meted out: seven years in prison.

Schmidt was being punished for his role in VW’s “Dieselgate” scandal, one of the most audacious corporate frauds in history. Yet his sentence brought no catharsis, least of all to Judge Cox, who at times seemed pained while imposing it. Sometimes, he told Schmidt apologetically, his job requires him to imprison “good people just making very, very bad decisions.”

Schmidt was a henchman, everyone understood, and his sentence, a stand-in. Judge Cox was addressing a set of people in Germany who are beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors because Germany does not ordinarily extradite its nationals beyond European Union frontiers. Above all, the Detroit courtroom was haunted by the shadow of an individual who was absent: Martin Winterkorn, who was VW’s CEO during almost all of the fraud. His name was uttered only twice, yet his aura loomed over the entire hearing.

The outlines of the scandal are well known. For nearly a decade, from 2006 to September 2015, Volkswagen anchored its U.S. sales strategy — aimed at vaulting the company past Toyota to become the world’s number one carmaker — on a breed of cars that turned out to be a hoax. They were touted as “Clean Diesel” vehicles. About 580,000 such sedans, SUVs, and crossovers were sold in the U.S. under the company’s VW, Audi, and Porsche marques. With great fanfare, including Super Bowl commercials, the company flacked an environmentalist’s dream: high performance cars that managed to achieve excellent fuel economy and emissions so squeaky clean as to rival those of electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius.

It was all a software-conjured mirage. The exhaust control equipment in the VW diesels was programmed to shut off as soon as the cars rolled off the regulators’ test beds, at which point the tail pipes spewed illegal levels of two types of nitrogen oxides (referred to collectively as NOx) into the atmosphere, causing smog, respiratory disease, and premature death.

At first, Volkswagen insisted the fraud was pulled off by a group of rogue engineers. But over time the company has quietly backed away from that claim, increasingly focusing on protecting a small cadre of top officials. The crime may well have started among a relatively small number of engineers afraid to admit to feared top executives that they couldn’t reconcile the company’s goals and the law’s demands.

Over the past two years, prosecutors in the United States and Germany have been tracing who was aware of the scheme and have identified more than 40 people involved, spread out across at least four cities and working for three VW brands as well as automotive technology supplier Robert Bosch. In a new, potentially explosive move, some Justice Department officials are pushing to indict Volkswagen’s former CEO. Such a step would be largely symbolic — the U.S. has no extradition treaty with Germany — but it would send a message that the misconduct was egregious and directed from the top.

And it would highlight a stark contrast in punishment. U.S. authorities have extracted $25 billion in fines, penalties and restitution from VW for the 580,000 tainted diesels it sold in the U.S. In Europe, where the company sold 8 million tainted diesels, VW has not paid a single Euro in government penalties.

There’s no doubt that Oliver Schmidt was guilty. He admitted that he’d been part of a cover-up. Yet he was far from the mastermind. Schmidt claimed not to have learned of the cheating till June 2015, just three months before the decade-long conspiracy ended, though he admitted that he “suspected” it in 2013.

Schmidt, 48, was an engineer who for several years was VW’s main point of contact with U.S. environmental regulators. He had only recently been promoted to a midlevel officer (making about $170,000 a year) when he got involved in the cover-up. Everything about him exuded a car-oriented company man. Born in Lower Saxony, the VW-dominated state where about 110,000 of the company’s 600,000 employees work, Schmidt came to the company in 1997, straight out of military service. About 50 personal letters submitted through his attorney — “I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many,” Judge Cox observed — extolled him as a loyal and loving son, brother, husband, uncle, and friend. In his spare time, the letters recounted, Schmidt enjoyed collecting old slot-car racing sets and restoring classic VW Beetles. When Schmidt got married, in 2010, he and his wife (herself an automotive engineer) held the ceremony in the showroom of a friend’s Volkswagen dealership in Miami. Schmidt was an all-too-loyal, VW lifer.

His punishment was designed to further “general deterrence,” Judge Cox explained at the hearing. In other words, the point was to send a message to other corporate officials that following illegal orders is no defense. It doubtless reflected frustration as well.

Schmidt had committed his crime, Judge Cox told him, “to impress … senior management and the board.” He was talking about Winterkorn, who was not only CEO from 2007 till the scandal brought him down in 2015, but also chairman of the company’s management board. Schmidt and a second employee had made presentations to Winterkorn and other senior officials at a meeting on July 27, 2015, according to versions of the facts endorsed by both Schmidt’s counsel and the prosecutors.

Winterkorn was a notorious micromanager — he was known for carrying a micrometer with him, so he could personally measure VW parts and tolerances down to the hundredth of a millimeter — and an imperious martinet. He was also then the highest paid CEO in Germany, having made $18.6 million the previous year, more than 100 times Schmidt’s pay.

Schmidt and a colleague had been summoned before Winterkorn to help solve a crisis. U.S. regulators had taken the drastic action of refusing to permit the sale of VW’s model year 2016 diesels — so crucial to its U.S. strategy — and the CEO wanted Schmidt to explain what was going on. As Schmidt would lay out, regulators with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had discovered a serious anomaly: VW Clean Diesels complied with NOx-emissions standards when tested in the lab, but then discharged up to 40 times the legal limit when driven on a road. Dissatisfied with more than a year of evasions and stonewalling, the regulators had decided to bar VW’s 2016 diesels from the U.S. until they got better answers.

The July 2015 meeting with Winterkorn delved into detail about the company’s misbehavior, legal filings allege. “An unindicted co-conspirator presented certain technical aspects of the defeat device,” according to Schmidt’s sentencing memo. (“Defeat device” is the phrase used to describe the software that enabled VW diesels to fool emissions tests.) Schmidt warned attendees of “the potential severe consequences to VW if regulators discovered the cheating.” A slide in his presentation raised a disturbing prospect — “Indictment?” — according to the FBI agent’s affidavit that initiated the charges against Schmidt.

Schmidt and his colleague explained to the group “in unmistakable terms that Volkswagen had been cheating, how they were cheating,” prosecutor Benjamin Singer told Judge Cox at the sentencing. (The prosecutors and Schmidt’s attorney, David DuMouchel, declined to be interviewed.)

If one believes the prosecutors and Schmidt — that Winterkorn was unmistakably informed of the cheating at the meeting — the CEO’s response to that information looked suspiciously like a cover-up. Winterkorn did not direct his subordinates to notify authorities about the cheating or launch an investigation to determine exactly what had happened.

Instead, he sent Schmidt on a mission to persuade U.S. regulators to allow the sale of 2016 VWs.

Winterkorn “directed Mr. Schmidt to seek an informal meeting with a senior-ranking CARB official he knew from his time in the U.S.,” according to Schmidt’s sentencing memo. “Rather than advocate for disclosure of the defeat device to U.S. regulators,” the FBI agent alleged in his affidavit, “VW executive management authorized its continued concealment.”

Before leaving on his mission, Schmidt “sought and obtained approval for the ‘storyline’ he intended to convey during his meeting with CARB,” Schmidt’s memo asserted. The script was approved by at least four senior VW officials below Winterkorn, according to the memo, which added, “Mr. Schmidt was instructed not to disclose the defeat device or any intentional cheating.”

In August 2015, Schmidt flew from Germany to Michigan, where he successively lied to two CARB officials. He emailed “detailed updates” to his boss in Germany and ten other “senior people,” conveying that “he was following the script of deception and deceit that VW, with Schmidt’s input, had chosen,” prosecutor Singer stated.

Finally, a different VW engineer, unable to stomach the deceit any longer, went off-script and confessed to CARB during a meeting on August 19. A VW supervisor formally conceded use of the defeat device to regulators on September 3, and the EPA and CARB made VW’s confession public on Sept. 18, 2015.

Winterkorn stepped down five days later, asserting that he was “stunned” by the events of “the past few days,” adding that he was “not aware of any wrongdoing on my part.” The company’s supervisory board exonerated him the same day, stating that he “had no knowledge of the manipulation of emissions data.” In testimony before the German Parliament in January 2017, Winterkorn insisted he had never even heard the phrase “defeat device” until the scandal erupted publicly. On four occasions that day he declined to answer legislators’ questions, citing ongoing criminal inquiries by German prosecutors.

So far, the Schmidt sentencing in Detroit is the ex-CEO’s closest brush with American criminal justice. Twenty-seven months after the conspiracy was exposed, Winterkorn has not been charged with any offense in either the United States or Germany. (His U.S. counsel declined comment for this article.)

Will he ever be? Will anyone higher up the ladder than Oliver Schmidt ever answer for this remarkable crime?

The answers to those questions remain very unclear. U.S. prosecutors want to indict Winterkorn, but have not yet received approval from the brass at the Department of Justice, according to two sources familiar with the process.

That would seem like a huge step. Yet in truth, a U.S. indictment of Winterkorn or other top VW figures is increasingly becoming moot simply because the prosecutors can’t gain access to most of the key figures in the case. Winterkorn hasn’t set foot in the U.S. since the scandal broke and, after Schmidt’s crushing sentence, is not likely to do so anytime soon.

Among the eight VW engineers charged in the U.S., only Schmidt and James Liang, a non-supervisor sentenced to 40 months this past August, are actually in the U.S., and only one other — an Audi engine development supervisor, Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio, who happens to be an Italian national — is extraditable.

That means the judicial focus is shifting to Germany. There, three sets of prosecutors are certainly going through the proper motions. The authorities in Braunschweig — acting for the state of Lower Saxony, where both the parent company, VW AG, and its VW brand passenger car unit are based — say they are investigating 39 individuals for fraud in connection with Dieselgate, one for obstruction of justice, and three for financial market manipulation (which in this instance would mean the failure to promptly disclose the gestating crisis to shareholders). In Munich, Bavarian prosecutors are looking at 13 individuals at VW’s Audi unit, based in Ingolstadt, for fraud and false advertising. And in Stuttgart, three executives are under scrutiny for market manipulation.

The two market manipulation inquiries focus on Winterkorn and three very senior current VW officials. The Braunschweig prosecutors, for instance, are looking at supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter P?tsch (who was CFO when the scandal broke) and current VW brand manager Herbert Diess, while the Stuttgart authorities are scrutinizing P?tsch and current CEO Matthias Müller. (VW declined to comment on the record for this article other than to provide a written statement in which it asserted that its executives fully complied with disclosure laws.)

Yet progress is strikingly slow. There have been only two German arrests so far. One was of Pamio; the other was of Wolfgang Hatz, a senior supervisor at, successively, Audi, VW, and Porsche. German prosecutors do not confirm the identities of detained individuals or what they’re charged with, but the Munich probe is focusing on fraud and false advertising, the office says.

We may not see many criminal prosecutions in Germany, let alone convictions or lengthy sentences. The country’s law presents many serious hurdles. There’s no criminal liability for corporations, for starters. There’s no statute barring a criminal conspiracy, no relevant criminal clean air law, and no law against lying to regulators or investigators. (The latter is actually protected by the robust German right to silence, according to Carsten Momsen, a law professor at Berlin’s Free University.) Prosecutors’ tools to reward and turn perpetrators into state witnesses are weaker than those wielded by their American counterparts. And some of the criminal laws that do exist — written to catch individuals who swindle other individuals — may be ill-suited to capturing the corporate machinations that happened in this case.

The result is breathtakingly different outcomes for both the company and its customers in the two countries. In the U.S., the system has delivered swift consequences. Facing harsh corporate criminal sanctions, flexible and draconian criminal laws, and streamlined consumer class-action procedures, Volkswagen quickly capitulated. Within nine months — breakneck speed in the legal realm — it agreed to pay roughly $15 billion in civil compensation and restitution to consumers and federal and state authorities for the 2.0-liter cars involved, and the sum has since crept up to more than $25 billion, as deals were reached for the 3.0-liter cars, and for criminal fines and penalties. Volkswagen has bought back or fixed most of the offending vehicles, and customers have received thousands of dollars per car in compensation for a variety of losses, including the deception itself and diminished resale value. The company pleaded guilty in April to federal criminal charges of conspiracy, fraud, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

VW gave U.S. prosecutors liberal access to the fruits of an investigation it commissioned by the Jones Day law firm, which conducted more than 700 interviews and collected more than 100 million documents. (The inquiry is ongoing, according to VW.) VW also helped recover forensically thousands of pages of documents that had been deleted by scores of VW employees in the final days of the conspiracy. In return, U.S. prosecutors gave the company credit for cooperation, slicing 20% from its criminal fine, which came to $2.8 billion even after the reduction.

In Canada, too, the company has paid compensation, including a $290 million deal for 3.0-liter cars just reached in January. And in South Korea, Volkswagen also paid dearly, receiving record fines and seeing eight local VW and Audi officials charged criminally, with one now serving an 18-month prison term.

Yet in Germany and Europe, it’s been a totally different story. There, VW has not offered compensation to any customer. In Germany, where the key decisions were made and all the decision makers reside, no criminal or administrative fines or penalties have yet been imposed.

來(lái)自于德國(guó)汽車(chē)制造商大眾、準(zhǔn)備發(fā)運(yùn)的新車(chē),位于德國(guó)西北部大眾工廠附近的埃姆登,2015年9月30日。大眾承認(rèn),全球有數(shù)百萬(wàn)量柴油車(chē)安裝了將在檢測(cè)時(shí)啟動(dòng)污染物控制的裝備。Ingo Wagner—AFP/Getty Images

大眾的“配合”給美國(guó)檢方留下了極其深刻的印象,但卻只限于美國(guó)境內(nèi)。例如,大眾并未向德國(guó)檢方遞交Jones Day的資料。公司去年4月稱(chēng),發(fā)布Jones Day調(diào)查結(jié)果總結(jié)報(bào)告將違背其一再做出的承諾。大眾稱(chēng),面向公眾發(fā)布的聲明中附帶了認(rèn)罪答辯,而且已經(jīng)揭示調(diào)查的重大發(fā)現(xiàn),但任何進(jìn)一步的聲明將破壞正在進(jìn)行的調(diào)查或與其答辯協(xié)議相沖突。然而,這份只有30頁(yè)、字間距為兩倍行距的認(rèn)罪協(xié)商文件并未提及任何人的姓名(檢方文件一般都會(huì)提及),可謂是異常謹(jǐn)慎。例如,該文件僅用一句話描述了2015年7月27日的會(huì)見(jiàn),而該會(huì)見(jiàn)在施密特起訴案中至關(guān)重要。(文件說(shuō),召開(kāi)了一場(chǎng)會(huì)議,但是沒(méi)有描述討論的內(nèi)容或高管是否出席。)

即便德國(guó)執(zhí)法機(jī)關(guān)采取了強(qiáng)有力的舉措,該案到目前為止一直都面臨著重重阻礙。去年3月,慕尼黑當(dāng)局搜查了Jone Day的德國(guó)辦事處,并收繳了公司有關(guān)大眾調(diào)查的資料。但聯(lián)邦憲法法庭在Jones Day的要求下臨時(shí)阻礙了其查閱文件,同時(shí)慕尼黑當(dāng)局則忙于解決律師客戶特權(quán)和受調(diào)查雇員隱私權(quán)等問(wèn)題。莫森教授指出,德國(guó)法院的判例法在這些問(wèn)題上出現(xiàn)了重大分歧。

“作弊裝置”在美國(guó)和歐洲的定義是相同的。不管怎么樣,大眾認(rèn)為這一軟件在北美之外是合法的。德國(guó)聯(lián)邦汽車(chē)交通局(又稱(chēng)KBA)——因其對(duì)柴油監(jiān)管政策的不嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)而臭名昭著——于2015年拒絕承認(rèn)大眾的上述理論。

大眾還堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為,非美國(guó)客戶并未受到侵害。鑒于美國(guó)之外地區(qū)寬松的NOx濃度限制,大眾認(rèn)為,大多數(shù)轎車(chē)可以通過(guò)簡(jiǎn)單的軟件調(diào)整來(lái)徹底解決這一問(wèn)題。然而,令很多工程師難以想象的是,大眾何以在不降低燃油經(jīng)濟(jì)性和破壞排放控制裝備壽命的前提下,僅靠軟件來(lái)解決NOx排放問(wèn)題,而這些問(wèn)題正是導(dǎo)致大眾進(jìn)行作弊的誘因。德國(guó)聯(lián)邦汽車(chē)交通局和其他德國(guó)監(jiān)管方已批準(zhǔn)對(duì)軟件進(jìn)行調(diào)整,但并未發(fā)布能夠說(shuō)明汽車(chē)召回效果的任何測(cè)試結(jié)果。國(guó)際清潔運(yùn)輸理事會(huì)的尤安?伯納德認(rèn)為,“大眾無(wú)法在不替換硬件的前提下解決NOx排放問(wèn)題?!蔽鞲ゼ醽喆髮W(xué)曾于2014年委托該理事會(huì)開(kāi)展調(diào)查,首次曝光了大眾使用作弊裝置的事件。

海外原告律師正在就柴油門(mén)事件在歐洲起訴大眾。但是,與刑事部門(mén)一樣,他們面臨著一系列障礙。依據(jù)歐盟規(guī)定,購(gòu)買(mǎi)了涉案車(chē)輛的800萬(wàn)歐盟客戶在理論上可以在大眾總部所在地下薩克森州起訴大眾。但德國(guó)沒(méi)有消費(fèi)者集體訴訟一說(shuō)。此外,原告所擁有的發(fā)現(xiàn)權(quán)非常有限,律師也拿不到勝訴酬金,而且發(fā)起訴訟的原告還得承擔(dān)風(fēng)險(xiǎn):如果敗訴,他們不僅得支付自身的法律費(fèi)用,還得承擔(dān)被告的一部分費(fèi)用。

誠(chéng)然,大眾并非是無(wú)罪。它也可能會(huì)收到來(lái)自于德國(guó)檢方或聯(lián)邦金融監(jiān)管局(類(lèi)似于美國(guó)證券交易委員會(huì))開(kāi)出的數(shù)億歐元罰單。

兩組原告——大眾股東和大眾柴油車(chē)車(chē)主——正試圖克服這些障礙,發(fā)起民事訴訟。其中更有威懾力的莫過(guò)于德國(guó)股東,他們稱(chēng)大眾未能披露這一正在發(fā)酵的丑聞。原告律師將使用“模型”訴訟機(jī)制,這是一種僅適用于股東訴訟案件的類(lèi)集體訴訟,計(jì)劃于9月在布倫施威格地區(qū)高等法院開(kāi)庭。但這一流程預(yù)計(jì)將耗費(fèi)數(shù)年的時(shí)間,而且最終獲得的賠償金額可能只能占到索賠額度的一小部分(索賠額95億歐元,約合112億美元),這取決于法庭如何對(duì)大眾危機(jī)披露時(shí)間是否過(guò)晚進(jìn)行定性。與此同時(shí),一種創(chuàng)新的“團(tuán)體訴訟”已于去年11月在布倫施威格展開(kāi),它代表了德國(guó)消費(fèi)者團(tuán)體——15347名大眾柴油車(chē)車(chē)主移交了其索賠主張,由美國(guó)律所Hausfeld柏林辦事處發(fā)起。

說(shuō)到公平,考慮到歐洲和美國(guó)之間政治、社會(huì)和監(jiān)管環(huán)境的巨大差異,大眾可能更容易為自己在海外的不配合行為找到說(shuō)辭。自丑聞爆發(fā)之后,進(jìn)一步的測(cè)試顯示,柴油排放造假是歐洲普遍存在的問(wèn)題。2016年12月,歐盟委員會(huì)開(kāi)始調(diào)查德國(guó)監(jiān)管當(dāng)局和其他6個(gè)歐盟成員國(guó)是否放松了對(duì)柴油排放的監(jiān)管力度。雖然與其他大多數(shù)案例相比,大眾的作弊方式更加露骨,但其柴油車(chē)在美國(guó)之外地區(qū)的NOx排放量并不比其對(duì)手高。此外,寶馬、菲亞特克萊斯勒、戴姆勒(奔馳制造商)、PSA(標(biāo)志和雪鐵龍制造商)以及雷諾尼桑在過(guò)去一年中均因潛在的柴油車(chē)排放不達(dá)標(biāo)問(wèn)題而遭到了德國(guó)或法國(guó)當(dāng)局的調(diào)查。

很明顯,雖然大眾的所作所為非常過(guò)分,但即便是在美國(guó),大眾也并非是個(gè)例。5月,美國(guó)司法部起訴菲亞特克萊斯勒在10.4萬(wàn)輛2014-16年的Jeep Grand Cherokees車(chē)型以及1500輛道奇Ram皮卡(美國(guó)最暢銷(xiāo)的柴油皮卡)上安裝了作弊裝置。(菲亞特克萊斯勒拒絕承認(rèn)存在這一不當(dāng)行為,并正在進(jìn)行和解談判。)

在歐洲,尤其是德國(guó),工業(yè)、勞工甚至環(huán)保政策都更加支持柴油車(chē)的生產(chǎn)。監(jiān)管力度并不大,違規(guī)的懲罰也很輕,而且為了讓本國(guó)汽車(chē)制造商能夠與鄰國(guó)競(jìng)爭(zhēng),國(guó)家監(jiān)管方也不愿為其設(shè)立障礙,因?yàn)樗麄冋J(rèn)為鄰國(guó)監(jiān)管方在這一方面也是睜一只眼閉一只眼。

然而,柴油門(mén)250億美元的罰金改變了歐洲的政治格局。丑聞讓人們開(kāi)始關(guān)注一個(gè)蓄積已久的健康問(wèn)題,而且這個(gè)問(wèn)題的罪魁禍?zhǔn)讓?shí)際上并不止大眾一家企業(yè),而是整個(gè)柴油車(chē)行業(yè)以及滋養(yǎng)和保護(hù)這一產(chǎn)業(yè)的政治文化。例如,歐洲政府報(bào)告顯示,每年有7.2萬(wàn)名歐洲居民因NOx排放而喪生。

2月份,萊比錫行政法院將對(duì)名為德國(guó)環(huán)保行動(dòng)倡議組織所提起的訴訟做出審判,最終可能會(huì)導(dǎo)致德國(guó)70個(gè)城市出現(xiàn)柴油車(chē)禁令。柴油車(chē)銷(xiāo)量如預(yù)料那樣出現(xiàn)了大幅下滑。12月,大眾首席執(zhí)行官馬希爾斯·穆勒在接受一家報(bào)紙采訪時(shí)指出,歐洲廢除長(zhǎng)期執(zhí)行的柴油行業(yè)主要稅收補(bǔ)貼的時(shí)候到了。此語(yǔ)一出,一片嘩然。

歐洲和美國(guó)之間監(jiān)管、環(huán)保和文化差異正在縮小。但是,正是由于·施密特跌入了深淵。這么看來(lái),施密特為此付出慘痛代價(jià)的事實(shí)存在一定的不公正性。然而,如果所有的后果都由他一人來(lái)承擔(dān),那么事情將變得更加不公平。

在丑聞爆發(fā)之后,柴油門(mén)事件的大致情形很快浮出水面。自那之后,刑事、民事和媒體調(diào)查所搜集和提交(或泄露)的證據(jù)一點(diǎn)一點(diǎn)地積累起來(lái),更加清晰地揭露了大眾陰謀廣泛的覆蓋面。當(dāng)人們?cè)谡莆樟诉@些信息之后再審視公司的過(guò)往行為時(shí)會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn),公司的高層必然已經(jīng)知曉此事,而且其背后也不斷折射出首席執(zhí)行官文德恩的影子。

2006年,大眾發(fā)起了一項(xiàng)策略,試圖通過(guò)營(yíng)銷(xiāo)更加清潔的柴油車(chē),重振當(dāng)時(shí)停滯不前的美國(guó)銷(xiāo)售業(yè)績(jī)。這一策略所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)在于,柴油引擎的NOx排放量比汽油引擎大,而且美國(guó)NOx法規(guī)要比歐洲嚴(yán)格的多,僅為歐洲排放標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的六分之一。大多數(shù)減少NOx排放量的方法都會(huì)降低燃油經(jīng)濟(jì)性,或需要頻繁的保養(yǎng)。(從環(huán)保上來(lái)看,歐洲專(zhuān)注于降低溫室氣體,包括二氧化碳。柴油因其卓越的燃油經(jīng)濟(jì)性,能夠非常好地降低碳排放。但柴油車(chē)還會(huì)產(chǎn)生能夠引起霧霾的NOx。正是因?yàn)槁迳即墯v史上的霧霾問(wèn)題,加州空氣資源委員會(huì)和美國(guó)環(huán)保署的監(jiān)管人員長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)一直對(duì)NOx所帶來(lái)的健康危害比歐洲方面更為敏感。)

大眾的美國(guó)策略出自首席執(zhí)行官畢睿德之手,而且在文德恩2007年1月接替了他的位置之后得以延續(xù)。2008年初,文德恩宣布了一個(gè)10年期計(jì)劃,要求在2018年之前讓公司的美國(guó)銷(xiāo)量翻三番,從而讓其超過(guò)通用和豐田,成為世界領(lǐng)先的汽車(chē)制造商。這一計(jì)劃在2015年中期之前獲得了成功,其關(guān)鍵點(diǎn)便是清潔柴油車(chē)。

VW’s “cooperation,” which so impressed American prosecutors, hasn’t extended beyond U.S. borders. Volkswagen has not shared the Jones Day materials with German prosecutors, for instance. And last April, the company revealed that it would be breaking its repeated promise to issue a report summarizing the results of the Jones Day inquiry. VW said the public statement of facts that accompanied its guilty plea revealed the inquiry’s key findings, and that any further announcement would risk undermining ongoing investigations or conflicting with its plea agreement. But the plea bargain document is just 30 double-spaced pages, identifies nobody by name, and, as prosecutorial documents often do, plays its cards close to the vest. It includes only one sentence, for instance, about the July 27, 2015, meeting that was so central to the Schmidt prosecution. (It states that a meeting took place, but gives no hint of what was discussed or that senior executives were present.)

Even when German law enforcement has taken aggressive action, it has been stymied so far. Last March Munich authorities raided Jones Day’s German offices and seized materials from the firm’s VW investigation. But the Federal Constitutional Court has temporarily blocked their examination, at Jones Day’s request, while it sorts out issues of attorney-client privilege and the privacy rights of interviewed employees. German court precedents are deeply divided on these questions, according to professor Momsen.

The definitions of “defeat device” in the U.S. and E.U. are nearly identical. Nevertheless, VW contends the software was lawful outside North America. Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, or KBA — notoriously lax in its diesel oversight policies — rejected this theory in December 2015.

The company has also insisted non-American customers suffered no injury. Because of more lenient NOx limits abroad, it maintains, most of those cars could be fully addressed with simple software fixes. Yet many engineers can’t fathom how software alone could possibly repair a NOx problem without correspondingly reducing fuel economy and undermining the durability of the emissions control equipment — the very problems that led VW to cheat in the first place. The KBA and other national regulators have approved these fixes, but haven’t released any test results shedding light on what the recalls achieved. “VW could not do miracles regarding NOx emissions without replacing the hardware,” argues Yoann Bernard of the International Council on Clean Transportation, which commissioned the 2014 study by West Virginia University that first revealed VW’s use of a defeat device.

Plaintiffs lawyers abroad are suing VW over the affected diesels there. But, like the criminal authorities, they are hampered by a slew of handicaps. Under E.U. rules, all 8 million E.U. customers who bought Dieselgate cars could theoretically sue in Lower Saxony, where VW AG is based. But in Germany there are no consumer class actions. In addition, plaintiffs have very limited discovery rights; lawyers are prohibited from accepting contingency fees; and plaintiffs who sue run the risk that if they lose, they will have to pay not just their own legal fees, but a portion of their adversary’s, as well.

To be sure, VW isn’t yet in the clear. It may yet be hit with penalties worth hundreds of millions of euros, imposed by German state prosecutors or by the BaFin, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (something like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission).

And two groups of plaintiffs — VW shareholders, and owners of VW diesels — are attempting to overcome the obstacles to civil litigation. The bigger threat comes from German shareholders, who allege that VW failed to disclose the budding scandal. Plaintiffs lawyers are using a “model” litigation mechanism, a class action analog available only for shareholder suits, which is scheduled to begin in September in the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig. But that procedure is expected to take years and the amount recovered may be a fraction of the huge sums sought (€9.5 billion, or $11.2 billion), depending on how early or late the court concludes VW should have disclosed the crisis. At the same time, an innovative “group action” was filed in Braunschweig in November on behalf of a German consumer group — to whom 15,347 VW diesel owners had assigned their claims — by the Berlin office of the American law firm, Hausfeld.

In fairness, Volkswagen’s obstructive stance abroad may be more defensible when one considers the vast divide between the political, social, and regulatory milieus in Europe and the U.S. Since the scandal broke, further testing has made clear that cheating on diesel emissions was endemic across Europe. In December 2016 the European Commission began investigating whether regulatory authorities in Germany and six other E.U. nations have been lax in their oversight of diesel emissions. Though VW’s cheating was, in most instances, more brazen in methodology, its diesels’ NOx emissions outside the U.S. appear to have been no worse than their competitors’. Moreover, BMW, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Daimler (maker of Mercedes), PSA (maker of Peugeots and Citro?ns), and Renault-Nissan have all come under scrutiny over the past year by either German or French authorities for possible diesel emissions irregularities. (The manufacturers deny wrongdoing.)

Even in the U.S., it’s become clear, VW’s conduct — though still the most egregious — was not unique. In May the Justice Department sued Fiat Chrysler for having allegedly placed a species of defeat device on 104,000 model year 2014-16 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 pickups, the most popular diesel pickup sold in America. (FCA, which denies wrongdoing, is in settlement negotiations.)

European and, especially, German industrial, labor, and even environmental policy favored the production of diesel cars. Regulatory oversight was slight, penalties for violations were trifling, and national regulators were disinclined to handicap their home country’s carmakers vis-à-vis those of neighboring countries, whose regulators were presumed to be winking at the same gamesmanship.

Dieselgate’s $25 billion consequences in the U.S. have transformed the political landscape in Europe, however. The scandal has drawn attention to a long simmering public health issue that, it turns out, was not caused by Volkswagen alone, but rather by the diesel car industry and the political culture that nurtured and protected it. For example, a European government report has found that 72,000 EU residents die prematurely each year because of NOx emissions.

In February the Administrative Law Court in Leipzig will decide a case brought by an advocacy group called Environmental Action Germany that could eventually result in diesel car bans in as many as 70 German cities. Diesel auto sales are dropping precipitously in anticipation, and in December VW CEO Matthias Müller shocked the automotive world by suggesting in a newspaper interview that the time had come for Europe to abandon key tax subsidies that have long supported the diesel industry.

The regulatory, environmental, and cultural gap between the E.U. and the U.S. is closing. But it was that chasm that spawned Dieselgate, and that chasm that Oliver Schmidt toppled into. So there is some injustice in the fact that Schmidt will pay so dearly. Yet there will be even greater injustice if he is the only one to do so.

The key contours of the Dieselgate affair emerged soon after the scandal broke. Since then the slowly accumulating evidence amassed and presented (or leaked) from criminal, civil, and media investigations have only made the breadth of VW’s conspiracy clearer. Examining the chronology of the company’s behavior in light of that information leaves little doubt that knowledge of the wrongdoing reached high up the ranks, repeatedly coming within a whisker of CEO Winterkorn himself.

In 2006, Volkswagen initiated a strategy to revive its then-moribund U.S. sales by marketing a clean diesel car. The challenge was that diesels produce more NOx than gasoline engines, and American NOx regulations were far more stringent than Europe’s — permitting only about one-sixth of what Europe then allowed. Most ways of cleaning NOx reduced fuel economy, harmed performance, took up space, increased cost, or required frequent servicing. (Environmentally, Europe had focused on reducing greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. Diesels, due to their excellent fuel economy, were great at reducing carbon emissions. But diesels also produced NOx, which causes smog. Because of the history of smog problems in Los Angeles, regulators from CARB and the EPA had long been more sensitive to the health dangers posed by NOx than their European counterparts.)

VW’s U.S. strategy was born under then-CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder, and continued when Winterkorn replaced him in January 2007. In early 2008, Winterkorn announced a 10-year plan which called for tripling the company’s U.S. sales by 2018, enabling it to surpass General Motors and Toyota to become the world’s leading automaker. Clean Diesel was the linchpin of the plan, which, by mid-2015, had succeeded.

2008年11月20日,洛杉磯會(huì)議中心,洛杉磯車(chē)展媒體預(yù)覽日期間大眾汽車(chē)集團(tuán)美國(guó)公司前總裁兼首席執(zhí)行官斯特凡·雅各布接受了大眾捷達(dá)TDI榮獲的年度綠色汽車(chē)獎(jiǎng)。David McNew—Getty Images

文德恩由大眾監(jiān)事會(huì)主席費(fèi)迪南德·皮耶希一手提拔。(德國(guó)公司有兩個(gè)董事會(huì):一個(gè)由高級(jí)管理人員組成的管理委員會(huì),另一個(gè)是非執(zhí)行董事組成的監(jiān)事會(huì)。)皮耶希從1993年到2002年擔(dān)任首席執(zhí)行官,被認(rèn)為是公司有史以來(lái)最有影響力的人物。他一方面是天才工程師,也是非常有預(yù)見(jiàn)性的領(lǐng)袖,但他也有無(wú)情的一面; 皮耶希曾高調(diào)指出,如果高管未能及時(shí)拿出優(yōu)異的業(yè)績(jī),自己就會(huì)毫不留情地解雇他們。

大眾的文化向來(lái)傲慢,只是考慮到其在國(guó)家經(jīng)濟(jì)中的重要地位,外界也就不那么在意罷了;大眾高管與德國(guó)政治家關(guān)系密切; 還有不尋常的準(zhǔn)公用事業(yè)地位(下薩克森州政府掌握著大眾20%有投票權(quán)的股票)。皮耶希曾卷入過(guò)重大丑聞,包括20世紀(jì)90年代的企業(yè)間諜事件(后來(lái)與通用汽車(chē)達(dá)成了1億美元的和解協(xié)議),以及2004年曝出的長(zhǎng)達(dá)近十年的勞工丑聞(期間公司一直在賄賂勞工代表和政客)。去年6月,美國(guó)前副總檢察長(zhǎng)拉里·湯普森因大眾美國(guó)“認(rèn)罪答辯”的規(guī)定而擔(dān)任大眾的外部監(jiān)督人。12月,他對(duì)德國(guó)的一家報(bào)紙表示,大眾的“企業(yè)文化腐敗”,且缺乏“公開(kāi)和誠(chéng)實(shí)的態(tài)度”。

皮耶希器重文德恩的原因在于,文德恩是擁有博士學(xué)位的工程師,曾擔(dān)任質(zhì)量監(jiān)控主管,以完美主義和微管理出名。幾年之后,令《福布斯》雜志對(duì)2011年文德恩訪問(wèn)田納西州查塔努加大眾工廠(該工廠負(fù)責(zé)制造部分柴油機(jī))的事件進(jìn)行了報(bào)道,而且令雜志感到百思不得其解的是,文德恩“不下七次”前往工廠,親自督導(dǎo)2012年款帕薩特在美國(guó)的發(fā)售事宜?!八麜?huì)親自駕駛早期原型車(chē),”文章接著稱(chēng),“而且會(huì)仔細(xì)檢查產(chǎn)品質(zhì)量,用口袋里隨身攜帶的千分尺測(cè)量車(chē)身板之間的小縫隙。一位美國(guó)高管回憶說(shuō),哪怕是微小油漆缺陷也逃不過(guò)這位原質(zhì)檢主管的眼睛?!馨l(fā)現(xiàn)所有毛病?!?/font>

在畢睿德和文德恩領(lǐng)導(dǎo)下,兩組工程師對(duì)制造適合美國(guó)市場(chǎng)的柴油車(chē)這一難題進(jìn)行了攻堅(jiān)。至少在大眾看來(lái),這是一個(gè)異常艱巨的任務(wù),因?yàn)槊绹?guó)的環(huán)保法規(guī)極其嚴(yán)格。大眾高級(jí)主管沃爾夫?qū)す模ㄔ诘聡?guó)被捕之后)2007年在一份錄像中曾抱怨加利福尼亞州的規(guī)定,這段話后來(lái)被多次提到,而且看起來(lái)有點(diǎn)像某種預(yù)言?!凹又菘諝赓Y源委員會(huì)一點(diǎn)也不現(xiàn)實(shí),”他說(shuō),“雖然我們可以做很多工作,也有這樣的愿意,但我們無(wú)法完成不可能完成的任務(wù)?!?/font>

鑒此,位于不同城市的兩組大眾工程師接手了這一任務(wù)。一組為大眾和奧迪品牌設(shè)計(jì)2.0升發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)。第二組來(lái)自于奧迪,致力于為兩個(gè)品牌的SUV和豪華車(chē)系列設(shè)計(jì)3.0升發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)。

兩組工程師很快找到了相同的解決方案:作弊裝置。目前還不清楚兩組工程師是否均獨(dú)立研發(fā)了這一裝置;目前美國(guó)檢方尚未指控存在同謀行為。早在1999年奧迪就開(kāi)發(fā)過(guò)作弊軟件,并安裝在2004年到2006年間在歐洲推出的V6 SUV車(chē)型上。

當(dāng)早期作弊軟件據(jù)稱(chēng)已安裝在歐洲市場(chǎng)的奧迪車(chē)上時(shí),文德恩很快便要采取行動(dòng)。當(dāng)時(shí)他擔(dān)任奧迪公司首席執(zhí)行官,而據(jù)說(shuō)是文德恩心腹的哈茨當(dāng)時(shí)是奧迪發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)開(kāi)發(fā)負(fù)責(zé)人。2007年文德恩成為大眾汽車(chē)首席執(zhí)行官后,提拔賀哈茨執(zhí)掌大眾汽車(chē)發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)的開(kāi)發(fā)業(yè)務(wù)。

美國(guó)檢方稱(chēng),2006年到2015年期間,先后執(zhí)掌大眾發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)開(kāi)發(fā)業(yè)務(wù)的四名負(fù)責(zé)人都知道作弊軟件的存在,最早2006年就已經(jīng)知道,而且大眾負(fù)責(zé)廢氣控制的負(fù)責(zé)人也全都知道。五人中有三人因串謀詐騙和虛假陳述在美國(guó)被起訴。但三人都身在德國(guó),美國(guó)檢方無(wú)權(quán)引渡。(這五個(gè)人在底特律的刑事訴訟中均沒(méi)有提交法律文書(shū),其中兩人的律師拒絕發(fā)表評(píng)論,而ProPublica也聯(lián)系不上其他人)。五人在德國(guó)均未被起訴。

據(jù)美國(guó)檢方透露,“奧迪高管層”早在2008年就已知道欺詐軟件的存在。檢方稱(chēng),2008年1月,奧迪高管層就曾派代表薩切奧·帕米奧和其他奧迪高級(jí)經(jīng)理向集團(tuán)負(fù)責(zé)人匯報(bào),警告說(shuō)使用作弊軟件可能是非法行為,在美國(guó)可能會(huì)帶來(lái)“非常嚴(yán)重的問(wèn)題”。2008年7月,奧迪環(huán)保認(rèn)證團(tuán)隊(duì)在信中對(duì)帕米奧說(shuō),這款軟件“風(fēng)險(xiǎn)極高”。然而作弊軟件安裝一直在繼續(xù)。(去年7月,帕米奧以串謀、電信詐騙和虛假陳述的罪名遭底特律聯(lián)邦法院起訴,當(dāng)月他被慕尼黑警方逮捕,律師拒絕置評(píng)。)

2011年,作弊行為蔓延到另一個(gè)城市里第三個(gè)大眾品牌,而高管似乎也有更多機(jī)會(huì)得知作弊情況。當(dāng)時(shí)大眾剛剛收購(gòu)保時(shí)捷,位于斯圖加特的保時(shí)捷工程師希望改裝奧迪3.0升柴油發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī),用于美國(guó)市場(chǎng)的保時(shí)捷的SUV品牌卡宴。根據(jù)紐約州總檢察長(zhǎng)辦公室提出的民事訴訟,奧迪工程師于當(dāng)年9月向保時(shí)捷工程師介紹了作弊軟件的工作原理,隨后保時(shí)捷便采用了欺詐技術(shù)。此時(shí),文德恩已將哈茨調(diào)往保時(shí)捷擔(dān)任研發(fā)主管。他曾擔(dān)任保時(shí)捷管理委員會(huì)成員,與大眾現(xiàn)任首席執(zhí)行官穆勒共事。

Winterkorn was the protégé of the chairman of VW’s supervisory board, Ferdinand Pi?ch. (German companies have two boards: a management board, composed of top executives, and a non-executive supervisory board.) Pi?ch, who had been CEO himself from 1993 to 2002, was considered the most influential figure in the company’s history. A gifted engineer and prophetic leader, he was also ruthless; Pi?ch boasted about his willingness to fire executives if they didn’t deliver quickly.

VW had an arrogant culture, shielded by the vital role the company plays in its nation’s economy; its officials’ cozy relationship with German politicians; and its unusual quasi-public status (the state of Lower Saxony controls 20% of its voting stock). Pi?ch had survived major scandals, including a corporate espionage debacle in the 1990s, which led to a $100 million settlement with General Motors, and a nearly decade-long labor scandal that surfaced in 2004, in which the company made illegal payments to labor representatives and politicians. The company had a “corrupt corporate culture,” lacking in “openness and honesty,” former deputy U.S. attorney general Larry Thompson, who became VW’s outside monitor in June under the terms of its U.S. guilty plea, told a German newspaper in December.

In Winterkorn, Pi?ch selected a Ph.D. engineer and former quality assurance chief with a reputation for perfectionism and micromanagement. Just a few years later Forbeswould comment with wonder at how, in 2011, he visited the VW factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. — where some diesels were manufactured — “no less than seven times” to oversee the U.S. launch of the 2012 Passat. “He drove early prototypes,” the article continued, “and pored over initial quality, using a micrometer he carries in his pocket to measure the tiniest of gaps between body panels. Even minor paint flaws didn’t escape the former quality manager, one American executive recalled. ‘He finds everything.’ ”

Under Pischetsrieder and then Winterkorn, two sets of engineers attacked the riddle of how to build a diesel passenger car for the U.S. market. It was a tall order, given how draconian U.S. environmental regulations were, at least in the company’s view. A high-level VW supervisor, Wolfgang Hatz (since arrested in Germany), was captured on video in 2007, complaining about California’s rules in a widely repeated remark that would come to be seen as prophetic. “The CARB is not realistic,” he said. “We can do quite a bit, and we will do a quite a bit. But impossible we cannot do.”

And so the two sets of VW engineers, located in different cities, embarked on their missions. One group would design the 2.0 liter engines for both VW and Audi cars. A second set, from Audi, would design the 3.0 liter engines for SUVs and luxury vehicles for both brands.

Both groups quickly homed in on the same solution: a defeat device. It is unclear whether they acted independently; to date U.S. prosecutors have not alleged coordination. Each group was aware of, and adapted, a variant of the cheating software that Audi had developed as far back as 1999, and had in its diesel V6 SUVs in Europe from 2004 to 2006.

At the time that the earlier cheating software was allegedly being implemented on Audis in Europe, Winterkorn was already just a couple steps from the action. He was CEO of Audi, while Hatz — reportedly a Winterkorn confidant — was Audi’s head of engine development. When Winterkorn became CEO of VW AG in 2007, he promoted Hatz to head engine development for VW AG.

A succession of four top supervisors for engine development for the VW Brand, serving from 2006 to 2015, all knew about the cheating software, as did, from as early as 2006, the head of exhaust control measures for all of VW AG, according to U.S. prosecutors. Three of these five individuals have been indicted in the U.S., for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making false statements. But all are in Germany, beyond the prosecutors’ extradition powers. (None have filed papers in the Detroit criminal proceedings. Lawyers for two of them declined comment, and the others could not be reached by ProPublica.) None of the five have been charged in Germany.

News of the fraudulent software reached “senior Audi managers” as early as 2008, according to U.S. prosecutors. In January 2008, they assert, members of that team sent a presentation to the head of the group, Zaccheo Pamio, and other senior Audi managers, warning that the software solution was possibly illegal and “highly problematic in the U.S.” In July 2008, a member of Audi’s environmental certification team wrote Pamio that the software was “indefensible.” The plan went forward, nonetheless. (Last July, Pamio was charged in federal court in Detroit with conspiracy, wire fraud, and making false statements. That same month he was arrested by Munich authorities. His lawyers declined comment.)

In 2011, the cheating spread to a third VW brand in another city, seemingly creating still more opportunities for word to leak up to executives. VW had just acquired Porsche, and Porsche engineers in Stuttgart sought to adapt Audi’s 3.0-liter diesel engine for use in a Porsche Cayenne SUV for the U.S. market. That September Audi engineers explained to Porsche engineers how the cheat software worked, according to a civil complaint filed by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and Porsche adopted the fraudulent technology. By this time Winterkorn had moved Hatz to Porsche as head of research and development. He served on Porsche’s management board, where he worked alongside VW’s current CEO, Müller.

2015年9月17日,法蘭克福第66屆IAA車(chē)展上,時(shí)任大眾汽車(chē)公司首席執(zhí)行官馬丁·文德恩(右),當(dāng)時(shí)擔(dān)任保時(shí)捷公司首席執(zhí)行官的現(xiàn)任大眾汽車(chē)首席執(zhí)行官馬蒂亞斯·穆勒(中)與德國(guó)總理安吉拉·默克爾(左)交談。Odd Andersen—AFP/Getty Images

與此同時(shí)在狼堡,2.0升柴油機(jī)排氣系統(tǒng)存在的問(wèn)題也讓公司的高層(文德恩的親信們)了解到了作弊軟件的存在。工程師梁發(fā)現(xiàn)NOx處理設(shè)備硬件故障率異常之高。他認(rèn)為出現(xiàn)問(wèn)題的原因是設(shè)備使用太頻繁,不僅在實(shí)驗(yàn)室測(cè)試期間會(huì)啟動(dòng),有時(shí)也會(huì)在車(chē)輛行進(jìn)過(guò)程中啟動(dòng)。他建議改進(jìn)作弊軟件,以確保僅在測(cè)試時(shí)啟動(dòng)排氣處理功能。

據(jù)美國(guó)檢方稱(chēng),2012年7月,梁和其他工程師約見(jiàn)了漢斯-雅各布·諾伊塞爾和貝恩德·高德維。當(dāng)時(shí)諾伊塞爾是大眾汽車(chē)發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)開(kāi)發(fā)負(fù)責(zé)人。高德維是握有實(shí)權(quán)的產(chǎn)品安全委員會(huì)成員,直接向大眾汽車(chē)質(zhì)量管理負(fù)責(zé)人弗蘭克·圖赫匯報(bào)。大眾內(nèi)部雜志報(bào)道稱(chēng),圖赫每周都與文德恩會(huì)面。高德維是文德恩的親信,有時(shí)被稱(chēng)為大眾的“消防員”——專(zhuān)門(mén)負(fù)責(zé)解決難題。

梁提出的解決方案獲得了批準(zhǔn),2013年年中出品的新一代大眾柴油機(jī)上安裝了更先進(jìn)的作弊軟件。此外,2014年召回舊款車(chē)型就是為了改裝作弊軟件。然而大眾告訴消費(fèi)者和監(jiān)管人員,召回是為了調(diào)整儀表板的警示燈,并解決某些環(huán)保問(wèn)題。(諾伊塞爾和高德維在美國(guó)被指控存在串謀、詐騙和虛假陳述,但在德國(guó)沒(méi)有被起訴,諾伊塞爾的律師拒絕發(fā)表評(píng)論,也無(wú)法與高德維取得聯(lián)系。)

按美國(guó)檢方的說(shuō)法,2013年年底,奧迪高層獲悉了在3.0升發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)上安裝作弊軟件的事情,這為叫停作弊軟件的行為提供了另一個(gè)機(jī)會(huì)??紤]到環(huán)境認(rèn)證部門(mén)管理者提出的擔(dān)憂,一位奧迪工程師讓員工準(zhǔn)備了演示文件,向“當(dāng)時(shí)的奧迪高管和品牌管理委員會(huì)成員”詳細(xì)描述了作弊軟件的工作原理。發(fā)送演示文件的工程師建議所有收件人在下載后應(yīng)立刻刪除郵件和附件。

同月,奧利弗·施密特看到了另一份關(guān)于奧迪欺詐軟件的演示。 “最好把封面上的人名刪掉,”事后施密特在電子郵件中說(shuō),“如果此類(lèi)文件落在當(dāng)局手中,大眾可能會(huì)遇到大麻煩。”

2014年3月,有關(guān)大眾內(nèi)部存在犯罪行為的重大線索開(kāi)始在汽車(chē)行業(yè)圈子里流傳,很快便傳到了高德維和圖赫的耳中,隨后文德恩也得知了這一消息。在一次行業(yè)會(huì)議上,西弗吉尼亞大學(xué)的研究人員提交了一份將于5月出版的研究報(bào)告。他們調(diào)查了三款在美國(guó)市場(chǎng)隨機(jī)選擇的柴油車(chē)排放情況。寶馬X5表現(xiàn)不錯(cuò),但大眾捷達(dá)和大眾帕薩特表現(xiàn)可疑,它們?cè)趯?shí)驗(yàn)室中通過(guò)了測(cè)試,然而其實(shí)際駕駛時(shí)的NOx排放值可高達(dá)法定標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的35倍。

Meanwhile, in Wolfsburg, problems with the 2.0-liter diesel exhaust systems were forcing knowledge of the cheat software further up the corporate hierarchy to people who knew Winterkorn personally and well. Engineer Liang had learned of unusually high numbers of hardware failures involving the NOx treatment equipment. The problem, as he diagnosed it, stemmed from the fact that the equipment was being used too much — not just during lab testing, but sometimes on the road. He proposed refining the cheat software to ensure that full exhaust treatment would be triggered solely during testing.

In July 2012 he and other engineers met with Hans-Jakob Neusser and Bernd Gottweis, according to U.S. prosecutors. Neusser was then head of engine development at the VW brand. Gottweis was a member of the powerful Products Safety Committee, answering to the head of quality management at VW AG, Frank Tuch. Tuch met weekly with Winterkorn, according to an account in VW’s in-house magazine. Gottweis was a close confidant of Winterkorn and was sometimes referred to as “the fireman” at VW — someone who put out fires.

Liang’s solution was approved, and his more finely tailored defeat device was installed on the next generation of VW diesels, which arrived in mid-2013. In addition, a recall was carried out in 2014 to retrofit older models with the tweaked software. Customers and regulators were told that the recall was to fix a dashboard warning light and address certain environmental issues. (Neusser and Gottweis have been charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making false statements in the U.S; neither has been charged in Germany. Neusser’s attorney declined comment, and Gottweis could not be reached.)

In late 2013, the fact that cheat software was being used in 3.0 liter engines reached the top echelons of Audi, according to U.S. prosecutors, presenting still another opportunity for someone to blow the whistle. An Audi engineer, prompted by the concerns of a manager in the environmental certification department, had his people prepare a presentation to a “then-senior executive and member of Audi’s brand management board,” describing in detail how the software worked. The engineer who sent the presentation advised every recipient to delete the email and attachment after downloading it.

That same month, Oliver Schmidt saw a different presentation about Audi’s fraudulent software. “It would be good if you deleted us from the cover page,” Schmidt emailed afterwards. “If such a paper somehow falls into the hands of the authorities, VW can get into considerable difficulties.”

In March 2014, the biggest clue about the criminal conduct festering within VW began filtering out into the automotive community, soon reaching Gottweis, Tuch, and, through them, Winterkorn. At an industry conference, researchers at West Virginia University presented a study, which would be published in May. They had studied the emissions of three randomly selected diesel cars available in the U.S. A BMW X5 had done fine, but a VW Jetta and VW Passat had each performed suspiciously, passing the test in the lab, but emitting up to 35 times the lawful NOx limit during real-world driving.

位于德國(guó)沃爾夫斯堡的大眾汽車(chē)工廠。Alexander Koerner—Getty Images

在沃爾夫斯堡,由諾伊塞爾和高德維等人領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的大眾工程師成立了一個(gè)特設(shè)委員會(huì),專(zhuān)門(mén)應(yīng)對(duì)這一研究報(bào)告。檢方稱(chēng),特設(shè)委員會(huì)的目的是針對(duì)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)可能提出的問(wèn)題設(shè)計(jì)回避和誤導(dǎo)性的回應(yīng)。

2014年5月23日,高德維圍繞西弗吉尼亞大學(xué)研究,寫(xiě)了一篇在當(dāng)前看來(lái)實(shí)屬無(wú)恥的報(bào)告。當(dāng)天圖赫將其與其他定期的周末閱讀材料一起交給了文德恩。(2015年10月大眾決定暫停圖赫的職務(wù),圖赫于2016年2月辭職。我們無(wú)法聯(lián)系上他,并讓其發(fā)表評(píng)論。)

2016年,德國(guó)媒體《圖片報(bào)》刊登了這份備忘錄,批評(píng)文德恩的人士將其看作是確鑿的證據(jù)。“公司不能向監(jiān)管部門(mén)詳細(xì)解釋NOx的排放量為何急劇增加,” 高德維寫(xiě)道,“否則監(jiān)管部門(mén)可能會(huì)展開(kāi)調(diào)查”,以檢查大眾是否使用了“作弊裝置”,隨后他又解釋了作弊裝置的為何物。他指出,有個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)正在對(duì)軟件進(jìn)行調(diào)整,這個(gè)新軟件能夠“降低實(shí)際駕駛期間的排放量”,“但排放量依然不符合標(biāo)準(zhǔn)?!?/p>

大眾宣稱(chēng),高德維報(bào)告中的內(nèi)容無(wú)法讓首席執(zhí)行官得出這是一個(gè)重大違規(guī)事件的結(jié)論,而它有可能只是經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)的產(chǎn)品缺陷。 “這份備忘錄只不過(guò)提到,美國(guó)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)有可能會(huì)調(diào)查是否使用了作弊裝置?!?2016年8月大眾律師在駁回美國(guó)股東訴訟的動(dòng)議中寫(xiě)道, “備忘錄并沒(méi)有說(shuō)明或暗示汽車(chē)實(shí)際已經(jīng)安裝了作弊裝置,也沒(méi)有說(shuō)美國(guó)監(jiān)管部門(mén)發(fā)現(xiàn)作弊裝置之后的后果,也沒(méi)有解釋如果監(jiān)管部門(mén)發(fā)現(xiàn)后可能會(huì)出現(xiàn)多大的財(cái)務(wù)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)?!?/p>

律師在美國(guó)民事訴訟中提交的法律文書(shū)中稱(chēng),文德恩承認(rèn)收到過(guò)這份報(bào)告,“但是不記得周末有沒(méi)有看過(guò)?!彼€承認(rèn),2014年5月便已知道西弗吉尼亞大學(xué)的研究,此時(shí)距離排放門(mén)事件曝光還有15個(gè)月。但該文件稱(chēng),“他相信,公司的一個(gè)工作組正在努力解決這一問(wèn)題。”

其中一個(gè)工作組確實(shí)在努力。一年多時(shí)間里,包括梁在內(nèi)的大眾工程師想盡辦法向加州空氣資源委員會(huì)和美國(guó)環(huán)保署的監(jiān)管人員撒謊。他們甚至向監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)承諾,公司將通過(guò)修復(fù)軟件來(lái)解決問(wèn)題,同時(shí)還于2014年底發(fā)起了另一次召回。

2014年11月,文德恩收到了一份關(guān)于召回的單頁(yè)備忘錄,其中提到軟件修復(fù)估計(jì)需要花費(fèi)2000萬(wàn)歐元。對(duì)于2014年的凈營(yíng)業(yè)利潤(rùn)達(dá)127億歐元的大眾來(lái)說(shuō),這點(diǎn)錢(qián)簡(jiǎn)直可以忽略不計(jì)。文德恩在德國(guó)議會(huì)作證時(shí)表示,有關(guān)人員在備忘錄中向他保證,這一問(wèn)題已經(jīng)得到解決。

但2015年初加州空氣資源委員會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn),召回車(chē)輛實(shí)際駕駛時(shí)的NOx排放依然超標(biāo)。

當(dāng)時(shí),在密歇根州奧本山市大眾環(huán)境辦公室工作了三年的奧利弗·施密特已經(jīng)升職。2015年2月他回到狼堡,成為了諾伊塞爾的三位副手之一。當(dāng)時(shí)他擔(dān)任大眾品牌開(kāi)發(fā)總監(jiān),手下有10,000名員工。

7月,加州空氣資源委員會(huì)向大眾工程師表示將拒絕認(rèn)證2016年的柴油汽車(chē),直到大眾能給出合理的解釋。因此2015年7月27日,施密特和一位同事向文德恩和其他高管回報(bào)了這一情況,與會(huì)者包括當(dāng)時(shí)負(fù)責(zé)大眾轎車(chē)部門(mén)的高管赫伯特·迪斯,以及大眾管理委員會(huì)的一名成員。

“文德恩承認(rèn),”他的律師在美國(guó)法律文件中寫(xiě)道,“2015年7月27日,也就是關(guān)于損壞和產(chǎn)品問(wèn)題的例行會(huì)議之后,文德恩、迪斯和其他大眾汽車(chē)公司人員參加了一個(gè)非正式會(huì)議,專(zhuān)門(mén)討論了2016年款柴油車(chē)的銷(xiāo)售許可問(wèn)題?!比欢?,律師格雷戈里·約瑟夫繼續(xù)說(shuō)道,“文德恩拒絕承認(rèn)2015年9月之前就知道柴油車(chē)排放問(wèn)題的起因或嚴(yán)重性?!?/p>

迄今為止,大眾對(duì)7月27日會(huì)議的態(tài)度一直模棱兩可,也拒絕為本文發(fā)表關(guān)于該會(huì)議的評(píng)論。 “個(gè)別員工在有關(guān)損壞和產(chǎn)品問(wèn)題的例行會(huì)議之外討論過(guò)柴油問(wèn)題,” 2016年3月大眾發(fā)布的新聞稿中稱(chēng)。這份新聞稿也是大眾對(duì)這一問(wèn)題的最后一次、最徹底的公開(kāi)討論。 “目前尚不清楚參與者當(dāng)時(shí)是否明白軟件調(diào)整違反了美國(guó)的環(huán)境法規(guī)。文德恩已經(jīng)要求公司對(duì)此問(wèn)題進(jìn)行進(jìn)一步澄清。“(2月下旬大眾可能會(huì)在向德國(guó)證券訴訟中提交的文件中詳細(xì)介紹公司對(duì)此次會(huì)議的看法,不過(guò)這些文件并不對(duì)外公開(kāi)。)

大眾對(duì)美國(guó)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)撒謊一直持續(xù)到8月19日,最終一位工程師向加州空氣資源委員會(huì)承認(rèn)了作弊行為。當(dāng)月晚些時(shí)候,在事情進(jìn)展情況傳到狼堡后,一位內(nèi)部高級(jí)律師通知員工,公司將于9月1日將采取“訴訟保全措施”,在此之后員工不得銷(xiāo)毀相關(guān)文件。約有40名大眾工程師認(rèn)為這份通知是命令他們立刻刪除文件。有人通知了博世的工程師,后來(lái)博世工程師也銷(xiāo)毀了文件資料。

大眾高層明顯感覺(jué)到麻煩來(lái)了。8月,他們讓美國(guó)凱易律師事務(wù)所調(diào)查了使用作弊裝置可能需承擔(dān)的監(jiān)管責(zé)任。律師事務(wù)所的回復(fù)令人欣慰:2014年,違反《清潔空氣法案》最高罰款金額僅為1億美元,涉及110萬(wàn)輛汽車(chē),而當(dāng)時(shí)大眾已知的可能涉案車(chē)輛還不到這個(gè)數(shù)字的一半。

但兩起事件幾乎沒(méi)什么可比性。在之前的案件中,現(xiàn)代起亞被指夸大了每加侖燃油經(jīng)濟(jì)性,較實(shí)際夸大了1到6英里,但現(xiàn)代起亞拒絕承認(rèn),因?yàn)槠饋喪褂昧俗罾硐肭闆r下獲得的測(cè)試數(shù)據(jù),而不是大量測(cè)試后的平均值。涉案車(chē)輛的排放量并無(wú)超標(biāo)情況,不需要召回,也沒(méi)有對(duì)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)撒謊。

凱易律師事務(wù)所在備忘錄中稱(chēng),律師并不知道十年來(lái)大眾一直在向監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)撒謊。律師還曾敦促大眾去核實(shí)自己向監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)遞交的聲明是否“完整無(wú)誤”。由于缺乏信息,備忘錄得出的結(jié)論是“目前尚未發(fā)現(xiàn)任何事實(shí)證明存在(犯罪)問(wèn)題。” (對(duì)于詢問(wèn)備忘錄的電話和電子郵件,凱易律師事務(wù)所沒(méi)有回復(fù)。原告律師邁克爾·梅爾克森代表柴油車(chē)主提起訴訟時(shí)也將備忘錄納入了訴訟文件當(dāng)中。這時(shí),備忘錄已經(jīng)公開(kāi)。柴油車(chē)主后來(lái)放棄了聯(lián)邦集體訴訟)。

2015年9月3日,大眾一名主管在下屬口頭承認(rèn)后,以書(shū)面形式向加州空氣資源委員會(huì)正式承認(rèn)使用作弊裝置。大眾承認(rèn),文德恩在第二天便已得知此事。盡管德國(guó)法律要求立即披露重大的市場(chǎng)信息,但大眾股東并沒(méi)有獲知此事。9月18日,當(dāng)加州空氣資源委員會(huì)和美國(guó)環(huán)保署公布這一舉世震驚的消息時(shí),股東們才知道大眾已承認(rèn)在美國(guó)銷(xiāo)售的近500,000輛2.0升汽車(chē)上安裝了非法作弊裝置。美國(guó)司法部次日宣布啟動(dòng)刑事調(diào)查。三天后,大眾宣布全球約有1100萬(wàn)輛汽車(chē)安裝了美國(guó)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)發(fā)現(xiàn)的雙模式軟件。大眾股票市值在一周的時(shí)間內(nèi)蒸發(fā)了約325億歐元(按現(xiàn)在的匯率計(jì)算約為385億美元)。隨后的幾個(gè)月里,大眾市值縮水規(guī)模升至約556億歐元(約合660億美元)。

大眾認(rèn)為,公司在2015年9月美國(guó)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)宣布發(fā)布“違規(guī)通知”前沒(méi)有義務(wù)透露任何信息?!按蟊娬J(rèn)為,公司已根據(jù)資本市場(chǎng)法規(guī)履行了披露義務(wù)”,大眾在發(fā)給ProPublica的書(shū)面聲明中稱(chēng)?!斑`規(guī)通知發(fā)送之前,管理委員會(huì)根據(jù)美國(guó)外部法律顧問(wèn)和眾多判例認(rèn)為,大眾仍有可能就這一問(wèn)題的解決辦法與美國(guó)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)達(dá)成共識(shí)。”

隨著排放門(mén)調(diào)查的緩慢進(jìn)行,2017年夏天,業(yè)界出人意料地爆出了一個(gè)更大的陰謀。德國(guó)《明鏡周刊》報(bào)道稱(chēng),1999年以來(lái),德國(guó)五大汽車(chē)制造商——奧迪、寶馬、戴姆勒(梅賽德斯-奔馳制造商)、保時(shí)捷和大眾一直互相勾結(jié),這一行為可能違反了競(jìng)爭(zhēng)法。(擁有其中三個(gè)品牌的大眾和戴姆勒已經(jīng)向歐盟競(jìng)爭(zhēng)主管部門(mén)承認(rèn),可能進(jìn)行過(guò)一些不當(dāng)?shù)挠懻?;寶馬則堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為自己一直都在合法經(jīng)營(yíng)。)

各方舉行過(guò)1000多場(chǎng)會(huì)議,涉及60個(gè)工作組,涵蓋汽車(chē)生產(chǎn)的各個(gè)方面,也包括排放控制。據(jù)該雜志報(bào)道,排放小組早在2007年就開(kāi)始謀劃用于控制某些柴油機(jī)NOx排放的排氣設(shè)備規(guī)格。這項(xiàng)新丑聞可能會(huì)連累大眾高管,使其接受更多的調(diào)查,但也有可能減輕他們的痛苦,因?yàn)檫@意味著業(yè)界都是一丘之貉。

2018年初,有損德國(guó)汽車(chē)制造商形象的消息接二連三地傳來(lái)。紀(jì)錄片制作人亞歷克斯·吉布尼和《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》稱(chēng),大眾等制造商資助的研究機(jī)構(gòu)在2014年曾用猴子測(cè)試柴油廢氣。據(jù)稱(chēng)測(cè)試車(chē)輛是當(dāng)前所謂的大眾清潔柴油車(chē)和老款福特柴油卡車(chē),分別在實(shí)驗(yàn)室的滾筒上進(jìn)行了測(cè)試,以便對(duì)比測(cè)試效果。該消息傳出后,大眾首席執(zhí)行官穆勒寫(xiě)信給員工,稱(chēng)這些測(cè)試“不道德,令人反感且非??蓯u”,并為“參與者的判斷失誤”道歉。穆勒表示正在調(diào)查并“一定會(huì)給出解釋”。猴子測(cè)試事件曝光后,大眾股價(jià)出現(xiàn)下跌。但相對(duì)一直回升的股價(jià)來(lái)說(shuō)只是個(gè)小波動(dòng)而已:現(xiàn)在的股價(jià)剛剛超過(guò)了排放門(mén)曝光時(shí)的水平。

詹姆斯·梁和奧利弗·施密特,可能最終還有帕米奧,有可能成為柴油門(mén)事件美國(guó)僅有的三位責(zé)任承擔(dān)人。雖然2006年欺詐事件剛開(kāi)始時(shí)梁還在狼堡工作,但他于2008年被調(diào)往加利福尼亞州洛杉磯西部的大眾奧克斯納德測(cè)試中心,協(xié)助啟動(dòng)清潔柴油計(jì)劃。2015年10月,當(dāng)聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局到訪其在紐伯里公園附近富人區(qū)的住處時(shí),他仍在測(cè)試中心工作。

政府稱(chēng),梁十分合作。梁今年63歲,在大眾已工作34年,性格溫和,家中有妻子和三個(gè)孩子。他沒(méi)當(dāng)過(guò)主管,但由于自始至終參與了欺詐,科克斯法官判處了40個(gè)月的監(jiān)禁,比檢方要求的刑期更長(zhǎng)。

施密特沒(méi)必要去美國(guó),他的舉動(dòng)相當(dāng)魯莽。2015年11月,他在沒(méi)有尋求律師意見(jiàn)的情況下就聯(lián)系了FBI特工,協(xié)助進(jìn)行調(diào)查。聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局讓他從狼堡飛到倫敦,并進(jìn)行了會(huì)面。美國(guó)檢方也飛去倫敦與他見(jiàn)面。但特工和檢察官后來(lái)認(rèn)定,施密特在五小時(shí)的會(huì)面中謊話連篇,為自己和上司開(kāi)脫責(zé)任,妨礙了進(jìn)一步的調(diào)查。

施密特顯然以為,自己跟美國(guó)政府的關(guān)系還不錯(cuò)。2016年12月,施密特讓其在美國(guó)的律師通知聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局,夫妻二人當(dāng)月晚些時(shí)候會(huì)去佛羅里達(dá)州度假。(他在佛羅里達(dá)州有一些租賃物業(yè),還希望在那里過(guò)退休生活。)2017年1月7日,就在二人返德途中,八名警察在邁阿密?chē)?guó)際機(jī)場(chǎng)的男廁里逮捕了施密特。他戴著手銬走出了男廁,隨后被帶離機(jī)場(chǎng),而他妻子則坐在一堆行李中抽泣不已。

如果施密特留在德國(guó),他或其他主管不一定會(huì)受到德國(guó)檢方的起訴,更不可能獲刑七年。研究企業(yè)犯罪的德國(guó)法學(xué)教授(奧格斯堡大學(xué)的邁克爾·庫(kù)比希爾和柏林自由大學(xué)的莫森)表示,其中一個(gè)可能的指控可能是虛假?gòu)V告,但較為狹義,并不一定適用,因?yàn)樗饕槍?duì)不公平競(jìng)爭(zhēng),且最長(zhǎng)刑罰為兩年。(莫森與一家為大眾員工提供法律服務(wù)的律所有關(guān)聯(lián),但他表示自己并沒(méi)有參與本案。)

在德國(guó),相關(guān)欺詐法一般是用于懲罰騙取他人錢(qián)財(cái)?shù)娜恕?“欺詐行為要求個(gè)人消費(fèi)者舉證自己的財(cái)務(wù)確實(shí)出現(xiàn)損失,” 庫(kù)比希爾在一封電子郵件中寫(xiě)道, “即便存在這一可能性,但要證明操縱柴油車(chē)排放的確會(huì)導(dǎo)致財(cái)務(wù)損失并不容易。”

“你得弄清楚,”莫森在接受采訪時(shí)說(shuō)道,“如果用美元或歐元計(jì)算,損失是多少?”算起來(lái)很難,因?yàn)檫@些汽車(chē)適合在道路上行駛而且很安全。我們無(wú)法得知的是,法官是否會(huì)考慮,由于汽車(chē)排放污染超過(guò)了消費(fèi)者的認(rèn)知程度,法律會(huì)認(rèn)可由此而造成的財(cái)務(wù)損失。大眾曾圍繞其歐洲民事責(zé)任向ProPublica發(fā)布了聲明,并在其中指出,“客戶滿意度是我們最優(yōu)先考慮的事情,我們?yōu)闅W洲客戶改裝的部件不會(huì)影響性能、燃油經(jīng)濟(jì)性或其他關(guān)鍵指標(biāo),這一點(diǎn)已經(jīng)得到了監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)的證實(shí)?!?/p>

確實(shí),根據(jù)媒體統(tǒng)計(jì)以及對(duì)三位歐洲案件原告律師的采訪,德國(guó)已有數(shù)十起消費(fèi)者訴訟,大部分案件似乎都以大眾獲勝告終。即使法官裁定大眾非法使用欺詐軟件,很多人仍認(rèn)為消費(fèi)者沒(méi)有遭受到任何應(yīng)予以補(bǔ)償?shù)膿p失。

剩下的有約束力的刑法就是禁止市場(chǎng)操縱的法規(guī)。大眾高管在向市場(chǎng)披露公司所出現(xiàn)的危機(jī)時(shí)似乎顯得特別遲鈍,但其中也存在障礙。例如,高管可以引述凱易律師事務(wù)所的報(bào)告,該報(bào)告預(yù)測(cè)可能存在1億美元的輕罰,而且他們也可以稱(chēng)這一金額并沒(méi)達(dá)到“重大”水平,所以沒(méi)必要向公眾披露。

或許,德國(guó)檢方最終能克服種種困難,給大眾定一些罪名。奧利弗·施密特也許會(huì)在這一方面提供幫助。在判決宣布前,施密特給科克斯法官寫(xiě)了一封信,信中稱(chēng),自己“在獄中的很多不眠之夜里”一直在仔細(xì)研究政府列舉的大眾造假證據(jù)。施密特寫(xiě)道,“我發(fā)現(xiàn),雖然我的上級(jí)曾對(duì)我說(shuō)他們?cè)谖野l(fā)現(xiàn)造假問(wèn)題之前并沒(méi)有參與這一事件,但他們其實(shí)在很多,很多年前便已知曉這一問(wèn)題。我真的感覺(jué)被自己的公司給耍了?!保ㄘ?cái)富中文網(wǎng))

補(bǔ)充報(bào)道由杰西·艾辛格撰寫(xiě)

譯者:馮豐

審校:夏林

In Wolfsburg, VW engineers, led by Neusser, Gottweis, and others formed an ad hoc committee to address the study. Their goal, according to prosecutors, was to concoct evasive and misleading responses to regulators’ anticipated questions.

On May 23, 2014, Gottweis wrote a now infamous report about the West Virginia study, which Tuch forwarded to Winterkorn the same day, as part of his regular weekend package of reading materials. (VW suspended Tuch in October 2015, and he resigned in February 2016. He could not be reached for comment.)

The memo, revealed by Bild Am Sonntag in 2016, has been regarded as a smoking gun by Winterkorn’s critics. “A thorough explanation for the dramatic increase in NOx emissions cannot be given to the authorities,” Gottweis wrote. “It can be assumed that authorities will then investigate” to see if VW used a “defeat device,” he continued, explaining what a defeat device was. A team is working on software changes that can “reduce the real driving emissions,” he noted, “but this will not bring about compliance with the limits either.”

For its part, Volkswagen asserts that nothing in the Gottweis report should have caused its CEO to suspect that anything more than a routine product defect was afoot. “This memo merely raised the prospect that U.S. regulators would investigate whether a defeat device was in use,” the company’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss U.S. shareholder litigation in August 2016; “it did not state or imply that a defeat device had actually been installed, or what it meant if a defeat device were found by U.S. authorities, much less the potential magnitude of any associated financial risks resulting from such a finding.”

Winterkorn admits receiving the report, according to papers his attorney filed in U.S. civil litigation, “but does not recall whether he read [it] that weekend.” He also admits being aware of the West Virginia University study by May 2014 — 15 months before the conspiracy ended — but says, according to the same filing, that “he believed a task force of Volkswagen employees were working to address the situation.”

One was. At its behest, VW engineers, including Liang, lied to CARB and EPA regulators for more than a year. They even promised regulators that they’d address the problem with a software fix, carried out through yet another recall in late 2014.

In November, Winterkorn was advised of this recall in a one-page memo that estimates the fix would cost just €20 million to effectuate — a negligible sum for a company whose 2014 net operating profit would come to €12.7 billion. Winterkorn, in his testimony before the German Parliament, said the memo reassured him that the problem had been addressed.

But by early 2015 CARB had discovered that the recalled vehicles still exceeded NOx limits during real-world driving.

By that time, Oliver Schmidt, who’d been at VW’s environmental office in Auburn Hills, Michigan for three years, had been promoted. In February 2015 he had returned to Wolfsburg to become one of three deputies to Neusser, who, by then, had become chief of development for the VW Brand, overseeing 10,000 employees.

In July, CARB told VW engineers that it would refuse to certify the company’s 2016 diesels until it got better answers. That precipitated the July 27, 2015, meeting at which Schmidt and a colleague made their presentations to Winterkorn and other top executives, including Herbert Diess, then and now the highest executive in charge of its VW brand passenger car unit, and a member of VW’s management board.

“Winterkorn admits,” his attorney wrote in a U.S. legal filing, “that on July 27, 2015, after a regular meeting about damage and product issues, he, Diess, and other VW AG personnel participated in an informal meeting during which there was a discussion regarding approval for the sale of model year 2016 diesel vehicles.” However, the attorney, Gregory Joseph, continues, “Winterkorn denies that he knew the cause or significance of the issues related to diesel emissions before September 2015.”

To date, the company has been vague and noncommittal about the July 27 meeting, and it declined to comment on it for this article. “Individual employees discussed the diesel issue on the periphery of a regular meeting about damage and product issues,” the company said in a March 2016 press release, its last and fullest public discussion of matter. “It is not clear whether the participants understood already at this point in time that the change in the software violated U.S. environmental regulations. Mr. Winterkorn asked for further clarification of the issue.” (The company is expected to describe its perspective on the meeting more fully in late February in a filing in German securities litigation, though such filings are not public.)

The lying to US regulators continued until August 19, when an engineer confessed to CARB regulators. Later that month, after word of this development reached Wolfsburg, a high-level in-house attorney notified employees that a “l(fā)itigation hold” would be issued on September 1, after which they not be permitted to destroy pertinent documents. About 40 Volkswagen engineers took this as a directive to start deleting immediately. Some notified Bosch engineers, who did the same.

Top VW officials clearly sensed trouble. By August they had asked the American law firm Kirkland & Ellis to look into possible regulatory liability for use of a defeat device. VW received the reassuring news that the largest fine that had ever been meted out for a Clean Air Act violation had been just $100 million, in 2014, for an incident involving 1.1 million cars — more than twice as many vehicles as were then known to be implicated in VW’s Clean Diesel problems.

Yet the incident being used as a benchmark was hardly similar. In that instance, Hyundai-Kia, which never admitted wrongdoing, had overstated fuel economy by 1 to 6 miles per gallon because it used figures obtained in the most favorable tests it had run, rather than by averaging results from a large number of tests. But the cars’ emissions were never illegal, no recalls were required, and no lying to regulators had been alleged.

The text of the Kirkland memo suggests that the lawyers hadn’t been informed that the company had been lying to regulators for a decade. The lawyers urged VW to find out if statements made to regulators had been “complete and not misleading.” Given the lack of information, the memo concluded that “we are currently unaware of any facts that suggest any such [criminal] issues in the present situation.” (Kirkland & Ellis did not return calls and emails seeking comment on the memo, which became public when plaintiffs lawyer Michael Melkerson filed it in a lawsuit on behalf of diesel owners who opted out of the Federal class action.)

On Sept. 3, 2015, a VW supervisor confessed to CARB in writing the use of a defeat device, formalizing his subordinate’s earlier oral admission. Winterkorn was notified the next day, VW has acknowledged. Still, despite German laws requiring that material market information be disclosed immediately, VW shareholders were given no inkling that anything was amiss. They learned only when CARB and EPA stunned the world on September 18 with the news that the company had admitted using an illegal defeat device on close to 500,000 2.0 liter cars sold in the U.S. The Justice Department announced a criminal investigation the next day. Three days after that VW revealed that some 11 million cars worldwide were equipped with the dual-mode software that the U.S. regulators had discovered. Over that week, the company’s shares lost about €32.5 billion in value ($38.5 billion at today’s rates). In the ensuing months, the total decline ballooned to about €55.6 billion ($66 billion).

Volkswagen argues that it had no obligation to disclose anything until U.S. regulators announced they were issuing a “notice of violation” in September 2015. “Volkswagen believes that it duly fulfilled its disclosure obligation under capital markets laws,” the company asserted in a written statement for ProPublica. “Right up until the publication of the notice of violation, the board of management believed, based on the advice of its U.S. external legal counsel and numerous precedents, that Volkswagen could resolve the issue consensually with U.S. regulators.”

As the Dieselgate investigation slowly churned, allegations of a much vaster conspiracy unexpectedly emerged this summer. Der Spiegel reported then that since 1999 all five German carmakers — Audi, BMW, Daimler (which makes Mercedes-Benz cars), Porsche, and Volkswagen — had been colluding in ways that may have violated competition laws. (VW, which owns three of the brands, and Daimler have admitted to EC competition authorities that some discussions might have been improper; BMW maintains they were lawful.)

The participants held more than 1,000 meetings relating to 60 working groups on different aspects of automotive production, including emissions control. As early as 2007, according to the magazine, the emissions group began colluding on specifications for exhaust equipment that was used to control NOx emissions in some of the diesel engines. This new scandal could hurt VW executives by bringing even more scrutiny to their actions — or help them by suggesting every car company was doing the same thing.

In early 2018 came yet more news that sullied German automakers, as documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and the New York Times reported that research organizations funded by those manufacturers — including VW — had, in 2014, gassed monkeys with diesel exhaust fumes from a modern-day, allegedly Clean Diesel VW and an old Ford diesel pickup truck, each running on rollers in a lab, in order to show their relative effects. When the news broke in January, VW CEO Müller wrote to employees, calling the tests “unethical, repulsive and deeply shameful” and apologizing for “the poor judgment of individuals who were involved.” The CEO said the company is investigating and “we will be coming to all the necessary conclusions.” VW’s stock price fell when the reports of the monkey tests emerged. But that was a minor bump in a resurgence of the company’s shares: They’re now priced just above where they were when Dieselgate was revealed.

That James Liang and Oliver Schmidt — and perhaps eventually Pamio — would end up being the only ones to take the fall for Dieselgate in the United States is happenstance. Though Liang was working in Wolfsburg when the conspiracy began in 2006, he was transferred in 2008 to VW’s Oxnard, Calif., test center, west of Los Angeles, to help with the Clean Diesel launch. He was still working there in October 2015 when the FBI knocked on his door in the nearby affluent community of Newberry Park.

Liang began cooperating immediately, according to the government. A slight, mild-mannered man with a wife and three children, Liang, now 63, had worked for VW for 34 years. He was never a supervisor. Still, because of his long involvement in the scheme — from start to finish — Judge Cox sentenced him last August to 40 months in prison, a lengthier term than prosecutors had requested.

Schmidt’s presence in the United States was unnecessary, even reckless. Acting without counsel, he contacted FBI agents in November 2015, offering aid with their investigation. The FBI flew him from Wolfsburg to London to meet with him there. U.S. prosecutors flew there, too, to participate. But the agents and prosecutors later determined that Schmidt lied extensively at the five-hour debriefing, falsely exonerating himself and his superiors, and setting back their probe.

Evidently imagining that he was still on good terms with the government, in December 2016 Schmidt had his U.S. lawyer notify the FBI that he and his wife would be travelling to Florida later that month for their annual Christmas vacation. (He owned some rental properties in Florida, and had hoped to retire there.) On January 7, 2017, as they headed home to Germany, eight officers converged on Schmidt in a men’s room at the Miami International Airport. They brought him out in shackles and then led him away. His wife was left alone, crying amid a pile of luggage.

Had Schmidt remained in Germany, it’s unclear whether he or other supervisors could have been charged under German law, and it’s inconceivable that the result would’ve been a seven-year sentence. One possible charge could have been false advertising, but that is narrow, not necessarily apt — it is aimed primarily at unfair competition — and carries a two-year maximum term, according to two German law professors who have studied corporate crimes: Michael Kubiciel, of the University of Augsburg, and Momsen of Berlin’s Free University. (Momsen is associated with a law firm that represents a VW employee in the inquiry, but says he is not personally working on that case.)

The relevant German fraud statute, in turn, is generally designed to capture individuals who swindle others out of money. “Fraud requires proof of a concrete financial loss on the part of an individual consumer,” writes Kubiciel in an email. “Proving that a manipulation of the diesel engine caused concrete financial damage is not easy, if possible.”

“You need to be able to figure out,” says Momsen in an interview, “what is the damage in dollars or euros?” That’s challenging, he continues, because the cars were roadworthy and safe. It’s not clear whether German judges will consider the fact that a vehicle was polluting more than the consumer realized to constitute the sort of financial damage the law recognizes. As VW put it in its statement to ProPublica concerning its civil liability in Europe, “Customer satisfaction is our highest priority and the modification we have provided our customers in Europe entails no change to performance, fuel economy or other key vehicle attributes, as confirmed by our regulator.”

Indeed, scores of consumer lawsuits have been tried in Germany and Volkswagen appears to be winning most of them, according to newspaper accounts and interviews with three European plaintiffs lawyers. Even when judges have ruled that VW used an illegal defeat device, many have still concluded that consumers suffered no compensable injury.

The main remaining criminal statute in play is the one barring market manipulation. VW executives might appear to have been astoundingly tardy in notifying the market of the building crisis at their company. Yet there are hurdles here, too. Executives can point, for instance, to the Kirkland & Ellis report — predicting modest sanctions in the vicinity of $100 million — and argue that that didn’t sound like a “material” loss that needed to be disclosed.

Perhaps, despite the many daunting obstacles, German prosecutors will yet manage to obtain some convictions. It sounds as if Oliver Schmidt will be rooting for them. In a letter to Judge Cox before his sentencing, he described how he had pored over the government’s VW evidence “during my many sleepless nights in my prison cell.” As Schmidt put it, “I’ve learned that my superiors that claimed to me to have not been involved earlier than me at VW knew about this for many, many years. I must say that I feel misused by my own company.”

This article is a collaboration between Fortune and ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news organization.

Additional reporting by Jesse Eisinger

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