BERLIN (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice has closed its probe into the Mercedes-Benz diesel emissions scandal and the car manufacturer is no longer facing charges, the company said on Saturday.
Mercedes-Benz cooperated fully with the DOJ, Renata Jungo Bruengger, board member for integrity, governance and sustainability at Mercedes, said in an emailed statement.
“With the DOJ’s decision, we are taking another important step towards legal certainty in connection with various diesel proceedings,” she said, confirming an earlier report in the German newspaper Handelsblatt about the DOJ decision.
In 2016, the U.S. DOJ called on Mercedes-Benz to conduct an internal investigation into possible manipulated emissions values in diesel vehicles.
The car maker was accused of deceiving consumers with false representations of its BlueTEC vehicles, which it marketed as “the world’s cleanest and most advanced diesel.”
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach and Kerstin Dorr, writing by Maria Martinez, editing by Clelia Oziel)
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