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.
Volkswagen (TG:VOW3)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Volkswagen Charts.
Volkswagen (TG:VOW3)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Volkswagen Charts.