It is a scandal that has splashed several automobile groups since 2015. The Dieselgate is now catching up with Mitsubishi Motors. The premises of the Japanese group in Germany were searched Tuesday, January 21.

Ten sites, including premises of the Japanese manufacturer, were visited as part of the investigation for "fraud" on the pollution levels of diesel engines, announced the parquet floor of Frankfurt in a press release.

Several groups splashed

"There is the suspicion" that diesel engines installed in "cars of the Mitsubishi brand" are "equipped with software" making them appear less polluting during tests than in actual traffic, explained the parquet floor of Frankfurt.

The investigation targets "officials of an international automobile group", "two international equipment manufacturers" as well as a commercial company, he said. A spokesperson for the Mitsubishi Motors group in Japan - member of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance - interviewed by AFP confirmed on Wednesday that the group's distributor in Germany, as well as its European research and development site, also established across the Rhine, had been the subject of "inspections" the day before by German justice.

The Japanese manufacturer was down sharply on Wednesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: its share fell by almost 4% to 436 yen around 1:20 p.m. (4:20 a.m. GMT). The German Continental, the world's second largest equipment supplier, also confirmed to AFP that three of its sites had been targeted by searches and that the company was "cited in the investigation as a witness".

Thirty billion euros in legal costs for Volkswagen

The premises of the Japanese equipment supplier Denso were also searched on Tuesday in Germany, a spokesman for the group in Japan told AFP on Wednesday, confirming information from the German weekly Wirtschaftswoche, but did not wish to say more . The title Denso (a third company owned by the Toyota group) dropped 1.88% to 4,909 yen around 4:20 GMT in Tokyo. Mitsubishi Motors, Continental and Denso all assured that they were cooperating with the investigators.

The searches took place in particular in Hesse (west of Germany), Bavaria (south) and Lower Saxony (northwest) and specifically concerned 1.6 and 2.2 liter diesel engines certified according to Euro 5 and Euro 6, according to the prosecution. They are part of the vast scandal of rigged diesel engines, which erupted in 2015, when the German manufacturer Volkswagen admitted to having equipped 11 million vehicles with software capable of distorting the level of emissions.

>> Read also: Dieselgate: Volkswagen faces its customers in a mega-trial in Germany

At the number one German car, the scandal has already cost the group more than 30 billion euros in recalls and legal fees. He announced in January that he had started negotiations to settle amicably the large lawsuit against hundreds of thousands of customers in Germany.

With AFP

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