VW "Monkeygate" scandal

C4Cat said:
The faking of results is the actual scandal here though.
Torturing innocent animals is pretty normal business practice for companies engaged in research
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That is precisely my point.

This Monkeygate nonsense is a non-issue. It's just getting unnecessarily publicity because of the other issues but as evidence by the other manufacturers involved it's normal and reasonable business practise.
 
SauRoNZA said:
That is precisely my point.

This Monkeygate nonsense is a non-issue. It's just getting unnecessarily publicity because of the other issues but as evidence by the other manufacturers involved it's normal and reasonable business practise.
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I wouldn't agree that animal torture is reasonable but I agree with everything else you say...
 
https://www.ft.com/content/22ca0e9a-6159-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2

Volkswagen has been caught up in several corporate scandals over the past quarter century, but none had the potential to taint the German carmaker’s products.

1987

In March that year, the company shocked the markets by announcing it was taking a 480m Deutsche mark provision, equivalent to £160m, to cover losses it incurred as the victim of a foreign exchange fraud — almost halving its annual profits.

This scandal, which led to an international manhunt for the fraudsters, caused VW shares to plunge almost a third and forced the German government to postpone plans to sell a 16 per cent stake in the carmaker. The government had planned to use proceeds from the stake to help finance the nation’s budget deficit.

After a seven-month search, FBI agents arrested a foreign exchange broker from Frankfurt wanted in connection with the fraud, having tracked him to an apartment in Hollywood.

2005

State prosecutors opened an investigation into allegations of bribery involving a senior VW executive — a case that quickly became known as the perks and prostitution scandal.

Peter Hartz, personnel director of the carmaker at the time, was eventually given a two-year suspended sentence in 2007 for breach of trust over his role in a bribery scheme. It involved payments to members of the company’s powerful works council, who were also entertained on lavish all expenses paid foreign trips, which included sex parties with prostitutes.

Mr Hartz was a close friend and adviser to Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor.

In the same year, VW was also caught up in a corruption scandal in India when a senior executive promised to build a factory in the Andhra Pradesh state in return for a €2m payment.

2006

Volkswagen was embroiled in a wider auto industry corruption scandal after executives at some carmakers were accused of taking bribes from suppliers.

This scandal led to the resignation of the executive chairman of Faurecia, a French automotive components maker, after Bernd Pischetsrieder, VW chief executive at the time, threatened to sever ties with the company.

2009

Porsche headquarters were raided as part of an investigation into alleged market manipulation by the company’s executives during a failed takeover of VW that dated back to 2005.

Porsche built a stake in its much-larger rival by using a contentious options strategy, which distorted the price of VW’s ordinary shares over a four-year period.

In the end, the takeover attempt failed and almost bankrupted Porsche — forcing the smaller sports car maker to agree to a merger with VW.
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That article is woefully incomplete, there are plenty more before 1987. How many members of the works council for BMW and Mercedes we sent on holidays to Brazil to snort company sponsored coke off company sponsored whores?
 
C4Cat said:
I wouldn't agree that animal torture is reasonable but I agree with everything else you say...
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Reasonable in the necessary evil context.

As long as the most human methods are used it has to be considered reasonable.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Reasonable in the necessary evil context.

As long as the most human methods are used it has to be considered reasonable.
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In this particular case it was completely and absolutely unnecessary as VW has even admitted.
 
SauRoNZA said:
That happens at the top tiers of pretty much all businesses.
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We are not focusing on "pretty much all businesses" here - this is about VW and how they continually screw the pooch (or gas the monkey). Stop trying to mussy the water with distractions like that.
 
Rouxenator said:
We are not focusing on "pretty much all businesses" here - this is about VW and how they continually screw the pooch (or gas the monkey). Stop trying to mussy the water with distractions like that.
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Thanks for supporting the VW threads. You're a champ.
 
Rouxenator said:
We are not focusing on "pretty much all businesses" here - this is about VW and how they continually screw the pooch (or gas the monkey). Stop trying to mussy the water with distractions like that.
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Funny how you conveniently forget that all three carmakers were shareholders of the testing company, that all three had diesel defeat devices and all three were testing on monkeys.

Yet, you single out VW as the evil one. It seems like I’m herding cats.

The German scientist behind the controversial experiments on monkeys to test the harmful effects of diesel exhaust fumes says there is no way senior management at the carmakers including BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler did not know about the trials.

Helmut Greim, who chaired the research advisory board of the now-defunct European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT) that commissioned the monkey trials, said representatives from all three carmakers met with his team on a quarterly basis to discuss the think tank’s work.
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https://www.politico.eu/article/lead-scientist-in-monkey-tests-automakers-fully-aware-of-trials/
 
Yeah, but what about the hookers and company sponsored coke?

If this was their first big scandal then so be it, other car makers were also involved. No need to single one out. But no.

It is not. VW has a consistent history for f...king about, as I have pointed out.
 
Rouxenator said:
Yeah, but what about the hookers and company sponsored coke?

If this was their first big scandal then so be it, other car makers were also involved. No need to single one out. But no.

It is not. VW has a consistent history for f...king about, as I have pointed out.
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I’d see it as a good work perk, rather than an inconvenience but too each his own.

I looked only for Daimler, too lazy to look for BMW and came up with a few interesting cases.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2010/mar/24/daimler-fine-corruption-investigation
https://www.thelocal.de/20150428/greece-brings-corruption-charges-against-daimler/amp
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2010-03/25/content_9641811.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/aug/02/germany.internationalnews
 
Good finds, but it never blew up quite as spectacular as, for example, Dieselgate.

Now you might find yourself asking why that is? Simple.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. VW is huge, ergo vis a vis concordantly their scandals blow up much bigger than the rest.

I'm glad for Monkeygate, really I am, on the back of Dieselgate and whatever other scandal will (not might, will) follow, it's good. PSA Groupe bought up Opel in the hopes to challenge the mighty VAG and with the latter pulling off stunts like this we could very well see a change in Europes bigger auto maker.
 
Rouxenator said:
Good finds, but it never blew up quite as spectacular as, for example, Dieselgate.

Now you might find yourself asking why that is? Simple.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. VW is huge, ergo vis a vis concordantly their scandals blow up much bigger than the rest.

I'm glad for Monkeygate, really I am, on the back of Dieselgate and whatever other scandal will (not might, will) follow, it's good. PSA Groupe bought up Opel in the hopes to challenge the mighty VAG and with the latter pulling off stunts like this we could very well see a change in Europes bigger auto maker.
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Mercedes and BMW, even Renault have done the exact same thing that VW did on their diesels, it’s just that VW was caught first. They are investigated in Germany, they have the same defeat devices.

Obviously, they’re bigger so you are hear more of them, and they promoted more diesel.

But I put all three on the same level (yet I keep on buying the same way than I keep McDonalds even though I know it’s horrendous).
 
Rouxenator said:
PSA Groupe bought up Opel in the hopes to challenge the mighty VAG and with the latter pulling off stunts like this we could very well see a change in Europes bigger auto maker.
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Uhuh. Keep going.

Peugeot maker PSA Group, which paid General Motors 1.3 billion euros for Opel, now wants about half of the money back after discovering the full extent of its CO2 emissions challenges and exposure to European fines, sources told Reuters
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On Friday, Volkswagen asked a court in Virginia to delay for six months the first of a series of consumer fraud trials after an attorney representing TDI owners apparently drew a parallel between VW-funded monkey experiments and the Holocaust, Reuters reports.

Volkswagen is dealing with a number of consumer fraud trials from TDI owners who didn’t take part in the $14.7 billion class-action settlement.

The first one, which concerns a North Carolinian who bought a 2014 VW TDI, is set to take place on Feb. 26 in Virginia. But that could soon change.

That’s because, according to Reuters, Volkswagen of America asked the Fairfax County judge to delay the trial after Michael Melkersen, a lawyer representing “over 300" VW TDI owners, made “inflammatory” comments on a Netflix documentary—comments that VW thinks could prevent a fair trial.

Reuters quotes VW’s filing, which references a couple of Melkersen’s comments, saying:

“There is a concern, obviously, amongst Volkswagen that if a jury were to ever hear about any of this stuff that could really impact the verdict in this case.”

Reuters goes on:

Volkswagen lawyers said that “pretrial publicity has connected (the company) directly with Hitler and the Holocaust,” which they said was not relevant to a trial about alleged consumer fraud claims.

One of Melkerson’s statements, which you can watch in the Netflix documentary “Dirty Money,” makes an apparent connection between VW-funded experiments that exposed monkeys to diesel exhaust fumes and Nazi gas chambers, with Melkerson saying in the clip:

"Obviously one can not help to think back throughout history of another series of events involving individuals being gassed by a person who was actually at the opening of the very first Volkswagen factory, and gave a speech there in connection with that opening."

As Melkerson makes the statement above, the documentary cuts to this image:

fmxv5n8evk8qqq13qrqz.png

Reuters spoke with Melkerson about VW’s request for a cool-off period. He called it “hogwash,” and went on, saying:

“This is another tactic to postpone their day of reckoning.”

There’s no mention in the story when the court will decide whether to grant VW the six month delay, but presumably it will happen soon since the first trial is only three weeks away.

It’s worth noting that VW alleges that its monkey tests had been approved by an independent organisation that looks out for the protection of animals.

According to the documentary, there were also discussions of running those same diesel exhaust tests on humans—discussions that, when asked about, VW of America’s head of Engineering and Environmental Office said:

“In retrospect, the optics aren’t very good.”

No *****.

https://jalopnik.com/vw-wants-to-delay-trials-because-a-dieselgate-lawyer-re-1822719359
 
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