VW whistleblower was a U.S. executive

DETROIT -- Volkswagen's U.S. criminal case closed on Friday, April 21, when a federal judge here accepted the terms of a January plea arrangement calling for the automaker to pay $4.3 billion in fines for its diesel scandal.

But 19 months after VW's misconduct first came to light, one nagging question persists: Who blew the whistle and first admitted to regulators that VW was lying about its dirty diesels?

A new book on the VW diesel emissions scandal by a New York Times reporter asserts that it was an American VW executive who first disclosed VW's criminal acts to regulators.

The whistleblower named in the book: Stuart Johnson, head of VW's Engineering and Environmental Office in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, which has responsibility for VW's interaction with U.S. regulators.

The book, due out in May, is Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal by Jack Ewing. Automotive News received a review copy of the book from its publisher, W. W. Norton & Co.

"You get the feeling from reading the documents that Johnson always felt queasy about the whole situation," Ewing told Automotive News.

Scott Lassar, Johnson's attorney, declined to comment on behalf of his client. 

A spokeswoman for VW Group of America said the automaker declined to comment. 

The cost of Volkswagen's diesel emissions scandal, which involves 11 million vehicles worldwide, is now $25 billion and continues to grow. 

The scandal, which became public in September 2015, led to the automaker buying back a half-million cars in the U.S. and settling a lawsuit with the government for $14.7 billion. It is also responsible for the automaker admitting its guilt to three felonies under U.S. law -- a distinction that sets its actions apart from previous industry scandals. 

In the book, Ewing quotes an interview with Alberto Ayala, the deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, naming Johnson as the first person to reveal to CARB the existence of VW's "defeat device" software. 

The book quotes Ayala as saying the revelation happened just before a key meeting between CARB and VW on Aug. 19, 2015, in El Monte, Calif., and that Johnson in making the disclosure was violating orders he had been given by his superiors. 

That same meeting is spelled out in the federal indictment of Oliver Schmidt, a former U.S.-based VW executive facing 11 felony charges related to the diesel scandal. That meeting came after weeks of executive discussions concerning how to keep regulators from discovering that VW had installed a device that would make its diesels meet federal regulations only while running on the dynamometer test. 

In the January indictments of six German VW executives -- including that of Schmidt, Johnson's immediate predecessor in his current job -- the government's main whistleblower is identified only as "Cooperating Witness 1." 

The indictments say that CW1 "is a VW employee who works in VW's engine development department." It's unclear whether that characterization of CW1's job was deliberately vague to hide the witness's identity. The indictment says the witness "has agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation in exchange for an agreement that the government will not prosecute CW1 in the United States." 

A second cooperating witness, CW2, whose identity remains unknown, also agreed to cooperate in exchange for an agreement not to be prosecuted, the indictments say. 

Johnson was deeply involved in attempting to certify the diesel vehicles equipped with illegal defeat devices. Yet he has not been charged, unlike six German executives also involved in that attempt to certify the diesel engines. 

Ewing verified to Automotive News his conversation with Ayala.

A spokesman for Ayala did not return repeated messages seeking comment.