BERLIN: The crisis enveloping Volkswagen has intensified as German prosecutors opened an investigation of the former boss of the world’s biggest carmaker, Martin Winterkorn, over the emissions scandal.
As a senior German politician expressed concerns about the effects on the wider economy, Winterkorn became the subject of a preliminary inquiry by prosecutors in Braunschweig into possible fraud relating to the sale of vehicles with manipulated emissions data.
Braunschweig is a town close to Wolfsburg, the home of VW. The carmaker has been rocked by the scandal, which erupted 10 days ago when a US government agency revealed that it had discovered VW had been using sophisticated software to cheat emissions tests.
Since then shares in VW, a lynchpin of the Germany economy, have been in freefall. They are now down 40% since the US Environmental Protection Agency accused the carmaker of installing a “defeat device”, which reduced nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions under test conditions.
