Audi Engineer Implicates Superiors in Diesel Case, Lawyer Says
Mr. Pamio has told prosecutors in Munich that top Audi managers were aware as early as 2006
that vehicles made by the division could not meet American and European emissions standards, according to Walter Lechner, a defense attorney for the former Audi engineer.
FRANKFURT — A cloud of suspicion hanging over Volkswagen thickened on Monday after a lawyer for a jailed former engineer said
his client implicated top managers of the German carmaker’s Audi luxury brand in a continuing diesel cheating scandal.
Statements and evidence provided to German investigators by Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio, former head of thermodynamics in Audi’s engine development department, suggest
that knowledge of emissions fraud reached higher in the ranks of management than Volkswagen has admitted.
In its monthly report published on Monday, the German Finance Ministry said that the diesel crisis had become “a new risk for the German economy.”
Volkswagen, which has admitted to outfitting its diesels in the United States with software to evade emissions rules, has paid out tens of billions of dollars in fines
and settlements over the deception, and several executives have been arrested.
