Judge Pulls Parent VW Into Spanish ‛Dieselgate’ Inquiry

MADRID ─ In a 4-page preliminary ruling dated June 30 and released Friday, Ismael Moreno, a judge for Spain’s High Court, has imputed Volkswagen for the alleged manipulation of certain 4-cyl. diesels, which would be a criminal cause of fraud that harmed an unspecified number of people, subsidy fraud and crime to the environment.

Accordingly, the court already has initiated the proceedings with the German authorities to obtain permission to interrogate VW executives in Wolfsburg, Germany, meaning officials from the parent company will not need to join the trial immediately.

Moreno had imputed Volkswagen-Audi Spain for the same reasons late in 2015, after the German parent company admitted that some 700,000 engines with cheating software had been used by its Spanish subsidiaries.

The decision to impute the parent company comes after prosecutor Marcelo Azcarraga received confirmation engines installed in Spanish-built vehicles were built in Germany.

Initially, Volkswagen had contended the Spanish case should focus only on its Spanish subsidiaries SEAT, Volkswagen-Audi Spain and Volkswagen Navarra.

The Spanish legal proceedings were initiated when Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) union and the Antifraud International Assn. denounced Volkswagen Spain for the “Dieselgate” scandal.

Currently, the union is facing its own scandal, however. Miguel Bernad, its general secretary and leader, was arrested in late April for extorting institutions and individuals, allegedly demanding large payouts in exchange for withdrawing the complaints the union had filed against them.

The FACUA, an important Spanish consumer organization, has asked Moreno to allow it to join the case on behalf of more than 1,600 affected motorists.

Some Spanish analysts believe it is unlikely Moreno’s move to involve parent-company VW has any practical effect, since the Spanish government already has shown on several occasions that it has no intention of reclaiming the subsidies granted to the automaker through different programs to renew the national fleet with cleaner vehicles.

VW did volunteer to return some up to €50 million ($53.2 million) in cash-for-clunkers subsidies late last year, but later pulled back the offer, arguing the subsidies were related to carbon-dioxide, not nitrogen-oxide, emissions and therefore were not affected by the cheating on diesel testing.