The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
January 12, 2017

Volkswagen Executives Indicted as Company Ordered to Pay $4.3 Billion
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Six top executives of Volkswagen were indicted Wednesday on charges they
helped the company skirt the Clean Air Act while defrauding the U.S.
government. The indictments came as the Justice Department announced
Volkswagen will pay $4.3 billion in fines after pleading guilty to three
felony counts. This is Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch: "Hundreds of thousands of cars that
Volkswagen sold in the United States were pumping illegal levels of
nitrogen oxide into our atmosphere-up to 40 times more than the amounts
permitted under federal law. Now, what's more, these vehicles were
equipped with software that masked the true amount of the pollutants the
cars released, thwarting the regulators who were doing the environmental
testing."



.