Volkswagen Completes Compliance Monitoring After Emissions Scandal -- Update
September 15 2020 - 05:22PM
Dow Jones News
By Mengqi Sun
Volkswagen AG has wrapped up a three-year supervision program
under a U.S.-appointed independent monitor in the wake of its
emissions scandal, resulting in a more transparent company, a top
executive said.
"But the end of the monitorship is not the end of our journey,"
Herbert Diess, chairman of Volkswagen's management board, said in a
statement Monday. "I am committed to the continuous improvement of
our organization and its culture, and so are all my board of
management colleagues."
The German car maker has worked to strengthen its risk-based
compliance program and has focused on training to improve workplace
culture as it sought to meet its obligations under a plea agreement
with U.S. authorities, Kurt Michels, Volkswagen's chief compliance
officer, said in an interview.
The deal with the Justice Department was related to the
company's 2017 diesel emissions settlement. Volkswagen admitted in
2015 to having rigged some 11 million of its diesel vehicles
world-wide with software that allowed them to dodge government
emissions tests.
Volkswagen said that since 2017, it has updated and strengthened
its structures and systems in technical development, governance,
risk management, compliance and legal functions, among other
divisions.
The efforts included appointing dedicated compliance officers
for individual business sections, such as marketing and sales, who
know the business and can provide guidance, Mr. Michels said. "The
compliance process is structured in alignment with the business
activities," he said.
The company also set up information channels through which
employees who need advice regarding compliance, human resources and
legal issues can get guidance quickly, Mr. Michels said. The
questions collected from the channels are also used to help design
future training programs, he said.
Volkswagen has aimed to build a workplace culture of
transparency and honesty through training, said Mr. Michels, who
joined the car maker in 2017.
"We try to, first of all, identify the risks that the company
has to deal with in each market, such as antibribery and
embezzlement," Mr. Michels said. He said the company has trained
employees on its code of conduct and provides anticorruption
training to those who have contact with government officials.
The Justice Department had appointed Larry D. Thompson, a former
U.S. deputy attorney general, as Volkswagen's independent
compliance monitor. Mr. Thompson issued his third and final audit
report this June, according to the company.
The monitoring covered the company's subsidiaries and
affiliates, excluding Porsche AG and Porsche Cars North America,
according to Volkswagen and Mr. Thompson.
"Volkswagen AG has become a different and better company," Mr.
Thompson, a lawyer at Finch McCranie LLP, said in a statement
Monday. "Volkswagen can be proud of the progress it has made. It
will require continued vigilance, but the structures and processes
in place and the commitments at all levels of the company, along
with the oversight of the Supervisory Board, can make Volkswagen a
long-term and sustainable ethics, integrity, and compliance
success."
The Justice Department and Mr. Thompson didn't respond to
requests for additional comment.
Volkswagen said that during the monitoring it implemented about
300 new or revised internal regulations and policies and expanded
its whistleblower program, anticorruption and antitrust prevention,
and business-partner due diligence.
The company said it established a group compliance committee and
a human-resources steering committee. It also said it launched a
global framework to oversee its integrity and compliance program
and introduced a code of conduct across its brands. The company
also published the results of an employee survey on ethics and
compliance.
"The company has taken tremendous steps" to improve its
compliance systems, Mr. Michels said. "We would be continuing to
work on our structure and process and addressing and mitigating
risks."
Write to Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 15, 2020 17:07 ET (21:07 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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