SENIOR executives at Volkswagen AG (VW) including its former chief executive covered up evidence that the German automaker had cheated on U.S. diesel emissions tests for years, three U.S. states charged yesterday in civil lawsuits against the firm.

    New York, Massachusetts and Maryland filed separate, nearly identical lawsuits in state courts, accusing the world’s No. 2 automaker of violating their environmental laws. The lawsuits, which could lead to state fines of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, complicate VW’s efforts to move past the “Dieselgate” scandal that has hurt its business and reputation, and already cost it billions of dollars.

    The suits outlined more than a decade of efforts by VW to deceive regulators in the United States and Europe, citing internal VW documents.

    VW last September admitted using sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with millions of vehicles worldwide affected. The scandal prompted the departure of VW’s CEO and other executives.

    The states charged that dozens of VW employees at various levels knew that the company’s “clean diesel” engines could not meet pollution standards in normal driving without compromises to performance or fuel economy. The suits publicly identified for the first time many of these employees and accused them of “unlawful conduct.”

    The suits said at least eight employees in VW’s engineering department deleted or removed incriminating data in August 2015 after a senior attorney advised them of an impending order not to destroy documents. The New York suit stated that “some but not all of the data have been recovered.”

    Former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn and VW’s former global head of marketing, Christian Klingler, knew by spring 2014 of the existence of unlawful “defeat devices” and “did nothing to prevent both Audi and Volkswagen from repeatedly deceiving regulators,” the New York lawsuit stated.

    The suits were filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in Albany, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in Boston and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh in Baltimore. Additional U.S. states could file similar actions, Schneiderman’s office said.

    “This cover-up was deep, wide and long-lasting. It extended from front-line engineers throughout the corner offices ... and right into the CEO suites,” Schneiderman said, adding that the “toxic corporate culture that produced this fraud must be stopped.”

    Of the nearly 600,000 VW diesel vehicles with excess emissions in the United States, about 53,000 were sold in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland.

    Volkswagen spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said the company already has agreed to spend billions of dollars addressing all environmental harms from the excess emissions, adding that it was “regrettable that some states have decided to sue for environmental claims now.”

    (SD-Agencies)