A German court has ordered Porsche SE, the investment company behind Porsche, to reveal whether it believes documents were destroyed when the Dieselgate scandal broke.
According to Automotive News Europe, Porsche SE’s board must answer five questions relating to what was known of Volkswagen Group emissions cheat practices before they were exposed in September 2015.
The information is vital in several ongoing legal cases with investors, who claim that they are entitled to billions of euros in damages. Both the VW Group and Porsche SE have refrained from answering questions related to this because of what they called “ongoing investigations”, the largest of which is led by law firm Jones Day.
"Citing the investigation by Jones Day is no valid argument to deny the information, because hiring an external law firm normally doesn't oblige the client to confidentiality," said the judges. "The right of shareholders to information may not be foiled by citing external investigations."
Judges have also accused the two companies of not taking enough action to prevent employees from destroying documents that would have been vital to the US legal case.
In the ongoing US case, a Volkswagen diesel engineering boss, James Liang, was sentenced to prison for 40 months for his involvement in the scandal. So far, eight high-ranking executives have been charged.
More content:
Join the debate
Add your comment
Roll on