The five Volkswagen executives who were criminally charged in the USA for their role in the Dieselgate scandal have been advised not to travel to the USA because they are liable to arrest there: they’ve also been told that leaving Germany is risky because they might be arrested and extradited to the USA.
One VW exec, Oliver Schmidt, was arrested at Miami airport while transiting through the USA after a holiday in Cuba. Five other VW execs face charges.
Other execs who have not yet been charged have been advised to stay away from the USA, in case charges are pending.
Given the risk of extradition from a third country, a reluctance to let senior managers leave Germany at all could pose considerable difficulties for Europe’s biggest carmaker, which employs more than 600,000 people worldwide and sells 88 percent of its vehicles outside its home country.Only one board member traveled to this week’s auto show in Detroit: VW passenger car brand chief Herbert Diess, who joined Volkswagen in July 2015, just two-and-a-half months before the VW’s decade-long deception of U.S. authorities became public.
A senior manager at the VW brand who asked not to be named called Diess’s decision to travel to Detroit “bold” and said his peers had been given guidance not to leave Germany as the risk of impending U.S. charges rose – although he would not go so far as to call it a “travel warning”.
Senior VW managers warned not to travel to U.S.: sources [Edward Taylor, Georgina Prodhan and Zachary Fagenson/Reuters]
(via Super Punch)