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GM engineer Ray DeGiorgio did not say anything
to the congressional investigators to suggest that Chief
Executive Mary Barra knew about the defective switch before she
took the top job at the company this year, the Times said,
quoting people familiar with the session.
DeGiorgio, who was suspended by GM on April 10, designed the
switch for the 2003 Saturn Ion and other models, including the
Chevrolet Cobalt, which have been recalled. GM has linked 13
deaths to accidents related to the switch.
The defective switch was redesigned in 2006 without a change to
the part number, which later confused investigators looking into
crashes of the now-recalled cars. Congressional investigators
produced an internal GM document showing DeGiorgio had signed
off on the change in April 2006.
In a deposition last year for a lawsuit related to a fatal 2010
crash in Georgia, DeGiorgio denied that he knew of the change.
The New York Times reported that he told congressional
investigators recently that at the time of the deposition, he
had forgotten about the change, because it was part of a package
of changes.
General Motors was not available for comment outside regular
business hours and did not respond to a request to make
DeGiorgio available.
(Reporting by Aurindom Mukherjee and Peter Henderson)
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