Oliver Schmidt, the general manager of Volkswagen's Michigan environmental and engineering office, is going to jail for his role in Dieselgate, the company's criminal conspiracy to trick regulators about the emissions from their diesel cars, allowing them to emit lethal levels of NOx on roads all over the world.
Schmidt is going to jail for seven years, the maximum sentence allowable under law. He pleaded guilty and wrote a statement confessing his "bad decisions." Seven other VW execs face charges, and six of those are "at large."
Schmidt's guilty plea reduced his potential prison sentence from 169 years to seven years.
Volkswagen anticipates record deliveries of its cars in 2017, and its US head has declared, "We're back."
Schmidt was in charge of the company's environmental and engineering office in Auburn Hills, Michigan, until February 2015, where he oversaw emissions issues.He returned to Germany the same month where he was told about the existence of the software. According to Schmidt's guilty plea, later that year he conspired with other executives to avoid disclosing "intentional cheating" by the automaker in a bid to seek regulatory approval for its model 2016 VW 2 liter diesels.
VW executive gets seven years for U.S. emissions fraud [Nick Carey/Reuters]
(via Naked Capitalism)
(Image: William Warby, CC-BY)
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