Audi Engineer Implicates Superiors in Diesel Case, Lawyer Says<br />Mr. Pamio has told prosecutors in Munich that top Audi managers were aware as early as 2006<br />that vehicles made by the division could not meet American and European emissions standards, according to Walter Lechner, a defense attorney for the former Audi engineer.<br />FRANKFURT — A cloud of suspicion hanging over Volkswagen thickened on Monday after a lawyer for a jailed former engineer said<br />his client implicated top managers of the German carmaker’s Audi luxury brand in a continuing diesel cheating scandal.<br />Statements and evidence provided to German investigators by Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio, former head of thermodynamics in Audi’s engine development department, suggest<br />that knowledge of emissions fraud reached higher in the ranks of management than Volkswagen has admitted.<br />In its monthly report published on Monday, the German Finance Ministry said that the diesel crisis had become “a new risk for the German economy.”<br />Volkswagen, which has admitted to outfitting its diesels in the United States with software to evade emissions rules, has paid out tens of billions of dollars in fines<br />and settlements over the deception, and several executives have been arrested.
