VW’s investigations won’t be concluded by the end of 2017…

Since Volkswagen’s “defeat device” behaviour was published in the media in September 2015, the VW Group has received constant limelight ever since. Although German prosecutors remain hopeful that the first legal rulings will be concluded at the end of the year, VW’s chairman believes this will be far from the case.

And we are not surprised!

Wishful thinking

Klaus Ziehe, a spokesman for the German Braunschweig state prosecutor’s office, said: “We hope to conclude the lawsuits… this year”. Ziehe noted that there were 4 lawsuits with 47 persons indicted.

VW’s chairman, Hans Dieter Poetsch, told German magazine Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he believes the internal investigation against the automaker will not draw to a close at the end of the year. Poetsch, who instructed U.S. law firm Jones Day to conduct an investigation into the whole emissions scandal, noted that they’ve made “good progress in the investigation”, but believes that it will “probably take longer than the end of 2017”. He added that “there will not be a real final stroke for some time to come”.

What happened to VW’s optimism of tying things up as quickly as possible?

VW won’t be writing their own report

Poetsch also confirmed that VW doesn’t intend to write or publish its own report about the investigation as it would be “unjustifiably risky to add a report of our own right now”.

The U.S. law firm have produced a summary of their findings in a “Statement of Facts”, which is to be presented to the U.S. Department of Justice.

This is a total u-turn on their initial assertions about the disclosing the Jones Day report.

Jones Day’s internal investigation

VW are reportedly unhappy with the fact that their lawyers were searched and information was seized on the 29^th March. VW has since filed a legal complaint with a Munich court to prevent the German prosecutors from using the information that was seized. The VW Group remains adamant that the prosecutors didn’t have authority or legal standing to search their law firm’s office.

VW did suggest they would be open to cooperating with the German prosecutors, noting that VW made serious mistakes, and that they would cooperate with authorities with the “highest transparency”. Their lack of enthusiasm for using information seized from Jones Day could suggest that they want to conceal something.

As always though, we can but speculate.

Empty promises?

Is the VW group trying to buy time? If so, for what reason?

Back in the early days of the emissions scandal, VW’s CEO Matthias Muller noted that: “we are speaking here of very complex occurrences, which in some cases are far in the past.” He continued to say that, “it will take several months before there are conclusive findings.” However, over a year and a half on from Muller’s statement, we are far from being at the conclusive stage of the investigations.

It seems like nothing has changed. VW still seem to be making empty promises. How can they regain the trust of customers, regulators, and dealers if they can’t follow through on their promises?

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