As if the automaker Volkswagen (VW) didn’t have enough to deal with as of late, they can add another slew of lawsuits to the many others they are juggling currently. Apparently, their investors are the most recent group looking to sue the company. According to Reuters, they are looking for approximately nine billion (yes, you read right – billion) dollars in damages.
MSN reported that the lawsuits launched by investors were filed near the car company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany in a Braunschweig court. In an ironic twist of events the court gathered 750 lawsuits on VW this past Monday September 19th, which was the first business day after the one-year anniversary of the automaker’s emissions’ scandal. All in all, there has been approximately 1,400 lawsuits filed in total. The single-largest claim filed about six months ago equals out to 3.7 billion dollars.
What do all these investor lawsuits stem from? Well, information, or lack of it. Their biggest beef is the fact that the car company did not reveal the details about that cheating emissions’ software to them in a timely manner. Still, VM has stated that they did not break capital market laws. It seems that the huge chunk of change they have set aside to help them deal with this scandal, a whopping 21.5 billion dollars, might not be sufficient after all. The consumer fix program alone is slated to cost Volkswagen 14.7 billion dollars, which will result in repairing these cars (although the ‘how’ seems unclear) or buybacks.
On top of everything else (lawsuits aside), Matthias Mueller, VM’s CEO has also stated that Audi head honcho Rupert Stadler is also being looked into as part of the scandal. While the CEO withheld any additional information, this may not be a shocker to anyone. Audi has also come clean, stating that the company’s V6, 3.0-liter, also had the very same faulty emissions’ software as VM’s four-cylinder 2.0-liter diesel models.
As such, the head of development for Audi, Stefan Knirsch, has been suspended as per an overall investigation. Interestingly enough, Knirsch stepped into the role after a previous employee quit. Before his head of development role, Knirsch was the head of Audi’s engine development division.
