VW suspends lobbyist over ‘repulsive’ diesel fume tests that used monkeys
Berlin/Frankfurt — Volkswagen (VW) suspended its chief lobbyist on Tuesday in response to reports the vehicle maker had sponsored tests that exposed monkeys and humans to toxic diesel fumes, methods condemned by its CEO as repulsive. Europe’s largest vehicle maker has come under fresh scrutiny after the New York Times said last week that it and German peers BMW and Daimler funded an organisation called European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT) to commission the tests. The report came more than two years after VW admitted to cheating US diesel emissions tests, sparking the biggest business crisis in its history, and pledged sweeping changes to ensure such misconduct never happened again. "Over the weekend, we had to learn once more that there is still a long way ahead of us to regain lost trust," VW CEO Matthias Müller said late on Monday at a reception in Brussels in his first public remarks on the tests. "The methods used by EUGT in the US wer...
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