Court records uncovered by Bloomberg reveal that 23 cell phones of Volkswagen employees, including its top U.S. lawyer and high-ranking executives, were either lost or erased as the diesel cheating scandal began to develop in late 2015.
Documents state that VW Group of America’s senior vice president for public affairs and public policy, David Geanacopoulos, lost his phone on December 1, 2015 travelling to Los Angeles International Airport.
In the months after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uncovered VW’s diesel cheating, the cell phones of both VW’s senior vice president of industry and government relations, Anna Schneider, and senior director of the automaker’s emissions test center, Matthias Barke, were erased of data.
Courts were made aware of the lost or erased phones in December 2016 and in the filing, the U.S. Federal Trade Commissions asked the judge to question VW officials about evidence and mobile phones being destroyed in the wake of the scandal.
It is alleged that the 23 phones were wiped or lost between September 2015 and February 2016.
In the filing, the FTC said “In the context of the massive scandal at the center of this case, 23 lost or bricked phones is a bright red flag, especially when they include phones that belonged to important individuals.”
Geanacopoulos says he made every attempt to find his phone after losing it. Meanwhile, both Barke and Schneider claim their phones were wiped of data after they entered the password incorrectly too many times.
In a statement, VW spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said “As we have stated previously, Volkswagen Group of America is not aware of any evidence that these mobile devices were intentionally wiped or lost. Nor has the Plaintiff produced any evidence that relevant data, including emails, were lost."
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