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@ investors (adds more details from the complaint)
WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) – The US Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Volkswagen AG and its former general manager, Martin Winterkorn, for the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal, accusing it of perpetrating a "mbadive fraud" on American investors.
The SEC said in a civil suit filed in San Francisco on Thursday night that between April 2014 and May 2015, Volkswagen had issued more than $ 13 billion worth of bonds and debt-backed securities in the markets Americans at a time when leaders knew that more than 500,000 US diesel vehicles have far exceeded the legal limits of vehicle emissions.
Volkswagen "has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits by issuing securities at more attractive rates for the company," said the SEC, adding that VW "repeatedly lied and misled the investors, consumers and US regulators as part of an illegal ploy selling its allegedly "clean" cars and billions of dollars of corporate bonds and other securities in the United States. "
The lawsuit seeks to prohibit Winterkorn from acting as a director or director of a US public company and recovering "ill-gotten gains", as well as criminal penalties and interest.
Winterkorn, who resigned a few days after the scandal became public in September 2015, was indicted by US prosecutors in 2018 and accused of conspiring to cover up cheating German manufacturer's diesel emissions.
He stays in Germany.
Volkswagen said in a statement that the SEC's complaint "is legally and factually flawed, and that it will vigorously dispute it." The SEC has filed an unprecedented complaint over securities sold only to sophisticated investors. having suffered no prejudice and receiving the entirety of their interest and principal payments and at the time. "
The automaker added that the SEC "does not argue that the people involved in the bond issue know that Volkswagen's diesel vehicles were not complying with US emissions rules when those securities were sold ", but repeats the claims that Winterkorn" would have played no role in sales ". .
No Winterkorn lawyer could be reached immediately on Friday.
Volkswagen has agreed to pay more than $ 25 billion to the United States following the scandal that lasted three and a half years, to pay the claims of owners, environmental regulators, states and dealers, and offered to buy back about 500 000 pollutants American vehicles. This figure included $ 4.3 billion in criminal and civil fines in the United States.
But the SEC said that VW "has never paid back the hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits obtained fraudulently".
In September 2015, VW admitted to secretly installing software on 500,000 US vehicles to cheat the government's exhaust emissions tests. He pleaded guilty in 2017 to criminal charges. A total of 13 people were charged in the United States, including Winterkorn and four Audi directors.
The action in favor of the SEC also includes the Volkswagen VW Credit arm and the Volkswagen Group of America Finance LLC, the entity used to sell the securities. (Report by David Shepardson, edited by Shreejay Sinha and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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