Judge denies bail request from VW exec
Washington — A federal judge in Miami has denied a request for bail from a veteran Volkswagen AG engineer who has been arrested by the U.S. government for his role in the company's scheme to cheat federal emission standards for its diesel cars.
Federal Magistrate Judge William Turnoff ruled Thursday that Oliver Schmidt, 48, a defendant in the VW emissions criminal case, should continue to be detained and removed to U.S. District Court in Detroit to face charges there.
Schmidt, former general manager of the Engineering and Environmental Office for VW of America, was arrested Saturday in Miami and charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States to commit wire fraud and violate the Clean Air Act. He is one of six Volkswagen executives who have been indicted in what regulators called a “10-year conspiracy” to rig hundreds of thousands of diesel cars to cheat U.S. emission standards.
A spokesman for the Detroit court said Thursday it is unclear when Schmidt will appear before a federal magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Detroit for arraignment.
Volkswagen agreed to a plea deal after Schmidt’s arrest that calls for the company to plead guilty to three felony counts related to the emission fraud. The company is also being forced to pay $2.8 billion in criminal fines and $1.5 billion in civil penalties.
Volkswagen’s diesel plea agreement is pending the approval of U.S. District Judge Sean Cox, who has been assigned to the case in the Detroit court.
The Detroit court said Thursday that no hearing has been scheduled in Detroit for VW to enter its guilty pleas. Cox’s next hearing on the VW emissions case is not expected to occur until late next week at the earliest.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that Schmidt and Heinz-Jakob Neusser, 56; Jens Hadler, 50; Richard Dorenkamp, 68; Bernd Gottweis, 69; and Jürgen Peter, 59, all of Germany, have been indicted and charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan.
Schmidt is the only one of the indicted Volkswagen execs that is in the U.S. German officials are not likely to cooperate with an extradition request from the U.S. for the remaining VW officials who are now under indictment.
Volkswagen has been under fire in the United States since it was accused by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September 2015 of selling diesels for years with software that activated required air pollution equipment only during emissions tests. They had been marketed as “clean diesels” for the company’s Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche brands between 2008 and 2015.
The automaker has admitted to programming its diesel cars to trick emissions testers into believing the engines released far less pollution into the air than they actually do, in violation of the federal Clean Air Act. Regulators have said that in normal driving they emitted up to 40 times more smog-causing nitrogen oxide than the legal limit.
Volkswagen has stopped selling diesel cars in the U.S. since it admitted to the scheme.
The $4.3 billion fine comes in addition to a $14.7 billion settlement the company reached earlier this year with the EPA that calls for Volkswagen to spend $10 billion to either buy back or repair about 475,000 2-liter diesel vehicles that were sold between 2009 and 2015 and were built with devices to trick emissions testers; the company must contribute $4.7 billion to federal efforts to reduce pollution.
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