The focus of the Volkswagen emissions-cheating crisis has switched to France, after the German carmaker’s offices there were raided by investigators.
Officials moved in on VW’s headquarters at Villers-Cotterêts in northern France, and other VW offices in Paris, and seized documents and computer hardware.
There was no word immediately on what the investigators were searching for or what they had found.
VW is recalling 8.5 million diesel vehicles around Europe after admitting that it fitted so-called defeat devices to cheat regulators’ emissions tests. A total of 11 million vehicles worldwide are affected. France is one of VW’s largest markets. It is reckoned that a million vehicles across the group’s VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat brands are affected there, compared with 1.2 million in Britain.
The British government is yet to be formally involved in an investigation and has stopped short of a mandatory recall of vehicles, leaving VW to deal with the problem. MPs cross-examined VW’s UK chief last week about the cheat devices.
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Last week police raided VW offices in Italy. In Germany, investigators said that they had identified fewer than ten suspects in inquiries into who knew what and who did what before the scandal broke. The company is braced for billions of dollars in legal claims.