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South Korea Gov’t Issues First Warrant For Arrest Of VW Official Over Cheating Scandal

REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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A South Korean court issued an arrest warrant for a Volkswagen official Friday in connection with last year’s fuel emission cheating scandal.

The country conducted tests on 20 diesel vehicles after finding the German automaker manipulated emissions of some vehicles sold inside South Korea.

The government’s decision comes after VW agreed Thursday to pay $10.2 billion to settle its U.S. emissions scandal case, according to reports from The Associated Press; the payout could be the largest by any automaker in history.

Reports of the payout came from two anonymous sources briefed on the issue.

The incident stems from a scandal last year that involved the company affixing 482,000 diesel vehicles with cheating devices that switched off emissions measurement data during road-testing conditions. Volkswagen will pay out between $1,000 and $7,000 per vehicle in compensation, and it has promised to fix the vehicles for free.

South Korea has been on the warpath recently, fining Nissan Motor’s Korean unit $290,000, as well as ordering the company to recall more than 800 Qashqai utility vehicles, and accused the Japanese car marker of affixing fuel emission cheat devices on its vehicles.

“We have filed the lawsuit to dispute the ministry’s accusations,” a spokesman at Nissan told reporters.

Nissan retaliated, announcing a lawsuit against the South Korea government for accusing it of cheating on emissions, as well as for the fines leveled against the Japanese company.

The ministry, for its part, filed a complaint with prosecutors against the company, charging the company and its president, Takehiko Kikuchi, of violating an environment law.

“We believe that we have taken appropriate legal action,” a ministry official said.

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