ARLINGTON, Va., May 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- With the unsealing of a criminal indictment against six top Volkswagen executives, including former CEO Martin Winterkorn, consumer group CASE is renewing a TV ad campaign urging President Trump to not allow automaker Volkswagen to dump its mountainous inventory of bought-back vehicles on the U.S. market. The German government owns 20 percent of Volkswagen.
A free-market oriented consumer advocacy organization, CASE is making a fresh round of ad buys highlighting that VW continues to sit on hundreds of thousands of vehicles on 37 remote locations across America as a result of the "diesel-gate" scandal after they were caught manipulating auto emissions. Volkswagen claims to be providing the vehicles with regular maintenance in the hopes that their proposed fixes will be approved by the EPA, allowing the cars to be resold in the U.S. market.
The ads will run on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC and Fox Business News.
Last year Volkswagen pled guilty to fraud and numerous other trade violations for deliberately rigging their vehicles to register higher fuel efficiency of their TDI diesel engines, violating U.S. law and defrauding consumers. This has been part of a broader global scandal of cheating in Europe and the Middle East, for example in the UK and Egypt.
CASE is further concerned that Volkswagen refuses to comply with a House Committee on Science, Space and Technology request for documents related to cheating emissions testing, and current CEO Herbert Diess is refusing to appear in a hearing called by the the committee.
Said CASE President Matthew Kandrach, "With the latest indictments we remain greatly concerned that Volkswagen still has not cleaned up its act, and in fact is stonewalling U.S. efforts to unearth the depth of the scandal in the hopes of preventing it from ever happening again. It is further troubling that a report issued by former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, now conducting an independent oversight of VW for the Department of Justice, has indicated that the necessary change in culture of Volkswagen necessary to prevent this scandal from being repeated has not changed."
Continued Kandrach, "We are all for consumers getting a great deal, but the situation with Volkswagen is very troubling. Given Volkswagen's track record, ongoing legal issues, and downright refusal to come clean on their current practices, it's maybe time we hit the brakes on that idea."
SOURCE Consumer Action for a Strong Economy