hankyoreh

Though South Korean government investigators have learned that affiliates of Germany’s Volkswagen Group are guilty of cheating on emissions once again, the companies have disputed the South Korean government’s findings instead of offering an apology.

In 2015, Volkswagen was at the center of an global scandal when evidence surfaced that it had tampered with vehicle emissions to fool testers; this time, it appears to have manipulated the levels of AdBlue, a diesel exhaust fluid, that are injected during driving. Though such actions are infuriating for consumers and shameful for manufacturers, the German companies maintain they weren’t “caught” because they’d made a “voluntary disclosure” to the government.

South Korea’s Ministry of Environment announced on Aug. 20 that it had determined that some 10,000 diesel vehicles, representing eight models, imported to South Korea and sold by Audi Volkswagen Korea and Porsche Korea were part of an emissions cheating scheme that deliberately decreased the amount of AdBlue released, leading to higher nitrogen oxide levels. The Ministry said it had notified the companies that the licenses for those vehicles would be revoked, that fines would be imposed, and that the police would be asked to investigate the crime.

Audi Volkswagen Korea took the unusual step of releasing a rebuttal to the Ministry’s press release late at night on Thursday, insisting that “the AdBlue issue was not uncovered by the government, since we’d already made a voluntary disclosure.” In the statement, the company expressed its frustration that the press release suggested that the government had caught it cheating and claimed that it had never attempted to cover up the matter.

But the Ministry of Environment responded with a rebuttal of its own. “Audi Volkswagen Korea did not willingly acknowledge that the tampering in question was illegal and claimed it had no effect on automobile emissions. The government verified the illegality of the tampering and the effect on emissions through road tests,” the Ministry said.

In fact, former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler was briefed in Nov. 2015 by the company executive in charge of diesel engines that a cheat device had been added to the AdBlue injection system in the six-cylinder diesel engine (made under Euro 6 standards). That briefing occurred after the manipulation of emissions in four-cylinder diesel engines came to light in Sept. 2015, kicking off the emissions scandal at Volkswagen better known as Dieselgate.

The company kept this under wraps and continued to sell vehicles in South Korea and Europe until 2017, when the cheating was discovered by Germany’s Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles (KBA) and they were ordered to conduct a mandatory recall. But these developments were kept secret in South Korea, and it was not until June 2018 that the Ministry of Environment began the investigation that ultimately led to the decision to revoke the licenses. For the claim of voluntary disclosure to have any validity, the company ought to have informed Seoul about the tampering with AdBlue injection in Nov. 2015, when top executives became aware of it.

Also significant is the fact that the Ministry of Environment confirmed the illegal emissions tampering through road tests. Audi Volkswagen Korea only used the vague and ambiguous phrases of “this issue” and “the matter in question” in regard to what it had disclosed to the Ministry, and a company spokesperson deflected a more pointed question by a Hankyoreh spokesperson — namely, whether it had actually told the Ministry about the illegal manipulation itself — with the comment that “we’ll have to look over the documentation.”

Under those circumstances, Audi Volkswagen Korea issued the vague platitude that the company “respects the decision of the Ministry of Environment.” This was effectively a ploy to sway public opinion by claiming to have made a “voluntary disclosure” without offering a single word of apology about the illegal equipment tampering, along with some verbal shenanigans aimed at staying on the authorities’ good side.

Prosecutors in Munich, Germany, have indicted Stadler and three others on fraud and other charges in connection with the AdBlue scandal and have ordered Audi to pay a fine of 800 million euros.

“It’s absurd for the company to be playing the victim card by claiming to have made a voluntary disclosure when it kept the issue covered up, at least in Korea, until June 2018. Korea’s public prosecutors and the Ministry of Environment need to take stern measures that are comparable to those taken in Germany,” said Ha Jong-seon, an attorney with the law firm Barun Law that is litigating a class-action lawsuit over Dieselgate in South Korea.

Hong Dae-sun, senior staff writer

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