VW Korea fined W26B for fraud on emissions

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VW Korea fined W26B for fraud on emissions

A Seoul court on Thursday levied a fine of 26 billion won ($22 million) on Audi Volkswagen Korea (AVK), the local unit of the German carmakers, for fabricating emissions test results for their cars imported here and producing false advertisements about the results.

The Seoul Central District Court handed out the sentence to the German companies about three years after AVK was indicted in January 2017 on charges of importing cars that didn’t meet local standards for emissions and noise in violation of the Clean Air Conservation Act.

Park Dong-hoon, former chief executive of AVK, who was also indicted three years ago on the same charges together with AVK, was sentenced to two years in prison, while a former AVK executive, surnamed Yoon, who was in charge of obtaining emissions-related approval from the Seoul government, was given a one-year imprisonment.

Despite the jail terms, the court didn’t order the immediate detention of Park and Yoon.’

The Seoul court also handed out suspended jail sentences ranging from four to eight months to four AVK officials.

AVK was accused of importing about 120,000 diesel vehicles that failed to meet European emissions standards from 2008 to 2015. The company used a so-called defeat device to manipulate the emissions results for the imported cars to get approval from the Korean government, according to prosecutors.

The company was also accused of importing about 41,000 vehicles from Germany from 2010 to 2015 after doctoring 149 documents on their emissions and noise tests.

Yonhap
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