Jones Day report in to the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal is brief, insufficient and…”private”

The full Jones Day investigation will not be published by VW; despite them saying in the early days that it would be…

The point of Volkswagen instructing global law firm Jones Day was to conduct an investigation in to their own company and provide a valuable insight as to how the car giant ended up in this mess in the first place.

The report was supposed to be published for all to see.

Unsurprisingly, Volkswagen backtracked on earlier assertions that the full Jones Day report will be published, and have instead opted to keep the report private. We can, of course, but speculate as to why they have decided to do this; but let’s not be naive here when we think of reasons as to why they’re now keeping it under wraps…

There is no doubt that The Volkswagen Group (VW) has angered millions of customers across the globe. Their terrible emissions cheating conducted in the past decade has prompted mass shock as consumers were astounded to find that their so called ‘eco-friendly’ vehicles were spewing out more tonnes of harmful Nitrous Oxide pollutants than expected.

VW Commissions Jones Day

Volkswagen found themselves desperate to regain customers trust to save their brand’s torn reputation. In a bid to show they were taking the scandal seriously, VW instructed leading international law firm Jones Day to conduct a thorough investigation and produce a report on the emissions scandal.

Spreading more than ten years, the conspiring, planning and carrying out of the emissions cheating has created extensive paperwork; not to mention the 11 million affected vehicles worldwide… In the U.S., VW continued to do all they could to keep their customers happy. The have agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines, settlements, and environmental initiative projects, but here in the U.K., victims are being paid absolutely nothing!

Whilst millions of consumers were expecting VW to publish Jones Day’s findings, the automaker decided to release a miniscule “synopsis” instead of the full investigation report. What’s been disclosed is a synopsis that supposedly summarises the entirety of the emissions cheating up to April 2017; in 29 pages.

It’s hard to believe that nearly 10 years’ worth of investigations can be summarised in 29 pages…

Who knows what the report truly discloses.

British customers neglected… Again!

Whilst the U.S. Department of Justice was provided with full access to the report, British authorities have been denied this privilege, despite having 1.2 million affected VW cars here. Again, it seems like another play from VW to avoid paying out compensation in the U.K..

During a meeting with our MP’s, VW’s U.K. boss Paul Willis floundered in addressing questions being put to him about the report. At one point he said that there was so much information in there that it required 450 people to look through 100 terabytes of material. According to VW, that was like going through 50 million books. So how is 50 million books-worth of information squeezed into 29 pages?

VW’s Explanation

VW board chairman, Hans Dieter Poetsch, offered a reason for failing to publish the Jones Day findings, suggesting that it might expose the company to legal risks.

Although he takes pride in labelling the investigation as “one of the most comprehensive in German business history”, we are truly baffled by their so called ‘reasoning’ for not telling the consumers and the public the extent of their deception by disclosing the full report.

Poetsch further explained that it was to protect the company from making statements that might be identical to the statements made in its plea with the U.S. Department of Justice; which sounds awfully suspicious…