"FRANKFURT — Germany’s car industry, already under scrutiny for concealing excess diesel pollution, suffered fresh damage to its reputation on Monday after prosecutors said a top Volkswagen manager was a suspect in a criminal inquiry, and authorities in Berlin ordered Daimler to recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles equipped with illegal emissions-cheating software.
Volkswagen, where the emissions cheating first emerged more than two and a half years ago, was punished for hesitating to overhaul its management ranks when Munich prosecutors said they had opened a fraud investigation into Rupert Stadler, the leader of the carmaker’s highly profitable Audi division and a member of the Volkswagen management board.
Mr. Stadler, whose home was raided by investigators on Monday, is the first active member of Volkswagen’s upper echelon to be identified as a suspect in the inquiry, which has broadened over time to include dozens of current and former managers and engineers."
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