Stellantis, the parent company of jeep, Chrysler and dodge, has agreed to plead guilty to environmental crimes and pay $300 million to settle an investigation into its illegal concealment of the amount of pollution produced by its diesel engine vehicles, Reuters reported The plea will resolve the U.S. Department of justice's several-year investigation into the carmaker's efforts to evade emission requirements for more than 100000 old ram pickup trucks and Jeep SUVs sold in the United States. The plea agreement is expected to be announced next week.
A spokesman for stellantis declined to comment. The Justice Department also did not respond to requests for comment.
Stellantis has been under the investigation of emission fraud by the Department of justice and the securities and Exchange Commission since at least 2019, when the company launched a recall of nearly 1 million vehicles that did not meet U.S. emission standards. The automaker later reached a civil settlement with the Ministry of justice, eventually forcing the automaker to pay $307 million to the owners of the affected cars.
So far, only one senior manager has been criminally charged. The Justice Department disclosed allegations of fraud against two other employees of stellas last year.
In a December 2021 document, stellantis said it was setting aside 266 million euros ($283 million) in case it needed to pay fines for fraud allegations. The company also disclosed that it had also been subject to individual litigation in connection with the plan.
The plea agreement was reached nearly seven years after the public learned of Volkswagen's diesel emission cheating scandal (now known as "diesel gate"). The carmaker later admitted that it had installed so-called "failure devices" in at least 600000 diesel cars in the United States - and about 1.5 million cars around the world - to deceive the government's exhaust emission tests and make the pollution exceed the legal limit.
Since then, other carmakers have been involved in similar plans. The Justice Department is also investigating Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, although the German carmaker was eventually allowed to settle these criminal charges for more than $2 billion last August. Last year, federal investigators concluded a nearly two-year investigation into the process Ford used to assess its vehicle emissions, but made no charges.