Volkswagen insisted on Wednesday that its management board did not violate financial market disclosure rules. It also responded to the lawsuits, claiming that the German carmaker was too slow to inform investors about the rigging of diesel emissions test.
According to First Post, Volkswagen is preparing for its defence for a new report due next month by the U.S. law firm, Jones Day, which is chosen by the carmaker to probe those responsible for the German car manufacturer's biggest scandal. Its investors have also filed several lawsuits at the German regional court in Brunswick, as they claimed that Volkswagen failed to disclose its rigging of emissions tests until three weeks after it had admitted its fault to the U.S. authorities last year.
The car company claimed that it had filed a statement in defense against allegations with a German regional court in Brunswick. "After careful examination by internal and external legal experts, the company confirms its belief that its management board duly fulfilled its disclosure obligation under German capital markets law," VW explained in a statement.
CNBC reported that in January, the law firm, Nieding + Barth, stated that it would file a case with a regional court in Brunswick. It is allegedly asking for hundreds of millions of euros to compensate with the damages made to the 66 institutional investors from Britain and the United States.
Additionally, the law firm also disputes that Volkswagen already knew about the full scale of its violation of the diesel emissions rules prior to its first statement on the scandal in September. It also insisted that VW should have faced the public and should have informed them ahead of time.
VW had already shell off over $7 billion to its value just to cover for the damages cost by its violation scandal. It eventually reached almost $17 billion, as estimated by Sanford Bernstein analysts in October. But the car company kept on insisting that they are still very committed with regaining the trust of its clients worldwide, after it had admitted that it rigged up to 11 million diesel vehicles with software designed to cheat emissions regulations, as reported by USA TODAY.
Meanwhile, over five months after the violation scandal headlined in the U.S., Europe's leading car manufacturer has yet to decide with a technical fix for almost 600,000 diesel cars, and is still facing an escalating amount of lawsuits. But VW claimed that it considered the court proceedings to be worthless.
