Volkswagen staff acted criminally, says board member

Olaf Lies, a Volkswagen board member and economy minister of Lower Saxony has told Newsnight some staff acted criminally over emission cheat tests.

He said the people who allowed the deception to happen or who installed the software that allowed certain models to give false emissions readings must take personal responsibility.

He also said the board only found out about the problems at the last meeting.

About 11 million diesel engine cars are affected by the problem.

Mr Lies told the BBC: "Those people who allowed this to happen, or who made the decision to install this software - they acted criminally. They must take personal responsibility."

He said: "We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting, shortly before the media did. I want to be quite open. So we need to find out why the board wasn't informed earlier about the problems when they were known about over a year ago in the United States."

'Huge damage'

He said the company had no idea of the total bill to sort out the engines and cover any legal costs arising: "Huge damage has been done because millions of people have lost their faith in VW. We are surely going to have a lot of people suing for damages. We have to recall lots of cars and it has to happen really fast."

He added that the company was strong and that rebuilding trust - and ensuring the majority of the 600,000 workers at the car giant were not blamed, was its priority.

He added his apology to those already made by senior company figures and said: "I'm ashamed that the people in America who bought cars with complete confidence are so disappointed."