MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US federal judge Sean Cox on Friday ordered Volkswagen to pay $2.8bn in criminal fines for cheating on diesel emissions tests, media reported.
The Financial Times reported that Cox approved a settlement between the car maker and the US justice department following Volkswagen pleading guilty and called the cheating “a case of deliberate and massive fraud.”
The public scandal around Volkswagen arouse in September 2015, when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused the company of using software to falsify emission test results for its diesel-engine cars. Volkswagen engineer James Liang pleaded guilty to charges of fraud by concealing emission test rigging software from US regulators. The company admitted that 11 million of its vehicles worldwide had been fitted with emissions cheating software and agreed to pay settlements totalling to $15 billion.
