Porsche accepts fine of €535m in Diesel scandal

The Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche has been fined 535 million euros in the wake of the Diesel exhaust scandal, the public prosecutor's office in Stuttgart announced on Tuesday.

The fine issued to Porsche was made up of a "profit absorption" of 531 million euros and a penalty for the "negligent breach of duty" amounting to 4 million euros, according to the German public prosecutor.

Porsche waived its right to appeal and said in a statement that "concluding the proceedings is another important step towards ending the diesel topic."

According to the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office, the German sports car manufacturer needed to pay the fine to the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg within six weeks.

The fine was issued by the German prosecutor for the negligent violation of Porsche's supervisory duties which had contributed to partial deviations of Porsche vehicles from regulatory requirements in the period from 2009.

The vehicles in question were Porsche diesel vehicles equipped with V6 and V8 engines from Audi, which have been sold on the European market and other markets worldwide. Porsche itself has "never developed and produced diesel engines."

The Stuttgart authority noted that the German Federal Motor Transport Authority had issued notices against Porsche regarding approximately 99,000 of these affected vehicles.

The profits from the sale of the affected vehicles were taken into account in the fines, said the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office.

In the fall of 2018, Porsche announced its complete withdrawal from diesel and was "fully focused on the development of cutting-edge gasoline engines, high-performance hybrid powertrains and electric mobility".

Last summer, the public prosecutor's office in Brunswick had already imposed a fine of 1 billion euros on Volkswagen in the course of the diesel investigations.

In fall, the authorities in Munich followed suit and imposed a fine of 800 million euros on Audi.