"We hope to conclude lawsuits ... this year," Klaus Ziehe,
spokesman for the Braunschweig state prosecutors office in Lower
Saxony state, where Volkswagen is headquartered, was quoted as
saying by the magazine.
Ziehe said there were four lawsuits with 47 persons indicted,
although these included double entries.
Only a handful of people had been targeted in the early stages
after the diesel emissions test cheating scandal that has
undermined the German car industry's influence.
And clearing up the scandal will drag on beyond this year, VW's
supervisory board head Hans Dieter Poetsch said in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Saturday.
"There will not be a real final stroke for some time to come,"
he said.
Poetsch also told the paper that VW does not intend to publish a
report of its own about the investigations alongside statements
made by the U.S. authorities, as it would be "unjustifiably
risky to add a report of our own right now."
Volkswagen would also remain quiet on the internal
investigations undertaken by U.S. law firm Jones Day it hired, a
summary of whose findings was compiled in the form of a
"Statement of facts" for the U.S. Department of Justice, as this
had been pledged to the U.S. authorities, he said.
Volkswagen filed a legal complaint with a Munich court on
Wednesday, seeking to prevent Bavarian state prosecutors from
using information seized during searches of Jones Day.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert; editing by Alexander Smith)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](column_spacer.png) |
|