STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - Mercedes-Benz will escape criminal charges in the USA in the diesel scandal. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has closed its investigation, the Swabian automotive group confirmed on Saturday, according to a report in the German newspaper "Handelsblatt". The brief DOJ letter was also made available to the German Press Agency. Mercedes-Benz had been accused of excessive emission values in around 250,000 diesel cars.

"With the DOJ's decision, we are taking another important step towards legal certainty in connection with various diesel proceedings. We have cooperated fully with the US Department of Justice and made the facts of the case transparent at great expense," said Renata Jungo Brüngger, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz for Integrity, Governance and Sustainability.

The proceedings have been dragging on since April 2016. The DOJ's investigation addressed potentially criminal conduct by Mercedes-Benz employees or representatives related to the calibration and disclosure of diesel vehicle emissions control system functionalities, a Mercedes spokesperson said, explaining that the request to conduct an internal investigation is a common procedure by U.S. law enforcement agencies for potentially illegal behavior by companies.

"We have evaluated 1.7 million documents, conducted more than 70 interviews with active and former employees and submitted over 300,000 documents to the US Department of Justice," Brüngger told Handelsblatt. In September 2020, the car manufacturer ended a class action lawsuit and civil authority proceedings in the USA in 2020 with settlements worth billions.

The carmaker avoided a class action lawsuit by settling for billions and thus already ended the civil proceedings./ze/DP/he