VW Reportedly Overstated French Sales For Years

If you thought Volkswagen was done with scandals, it seems the company can’t stay out of them. First, it was Dieselgate, which triggered all kinds of fines, charges, and vehicle buybacks. Now, Reuters says internal auditors discovered the automaker’s French division was falsifying sales data.

This isn’t a recent effort, either. Apparently, it’s been going on for years, and nobody’s figured it out until now. The whole scheme was to make it appear that Volkswagen was selling far more vehicles to the French than was reality.

Among the discrepancies auditors found was that quite a few vehicles were registered by owners months or years after they were supposedly delivered. Before you think that was because of French government red tape, Reuters says the registration process only takes a few weeks.

It gets better. Auditors uncovered that some vehicles marked as sold never had purchase contracts. That’s definitely some creative accounting.

All in all, almost 800,000 vehicles were part of these alternative sales facts. The majority have been Audis, interestingly enough.

Volkswagen wouldn’t talk to Reuters about the report, saying it was company policy to not comment on internal documents. Like anyone believes that.

Apparently, the allure of German engineering alone wasn’t enough to pump up Volkswagen’s numbers in France.