BERLIN (Reuters) – German prosecutors have charged 15 executives from Volkswagen AG and a supplier in connection with the diesel emissions scandal, news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported on Saturday.
The suspects are accused of aiding and abetting fraud in combination with tax evasion, indirect false certification and criminal advertising, the news agency reported citing Klaus Ziehe, a spokesman for the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office did not name the charged executives, the report said.
No immediate comment was available from the prosecutor’s office or from Volkswagen.
Volkswagen said last month that it would claim damages from its former CEO Martin Winterkorn and former Audi boss Rupert Stadler over the diesel emissions scandal, which was discovered in 2015, as it looks to draw a line under its biggest-ever crisis.
The trial of Winterkorn and the other managers has been postponed until September due to the pandemic.
The former CEO and other managers were charged in 2019 over cars sold to consumers with a so-called defeat device which helped to circumvent environmental tests of diesel engines.
(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; editing by Jason Neely)
