Hamburg/Berlin: Ex-Volkswagen Chairman Ferdinand Piech, who resigned after a showdown with former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, has refused to testify to German lawmakers investigating a possible government's role in the VW emissions scandal, according to his lawyer.
Piech, also VW's former CEO who spearheaded the carmaker's global expansion, gave testimony to lawyers of US law firm Jones Day last April and to German prosecutors in Braunschweig near VW's Wolfsburg headquarters in December, his lawyer said.
"These comments were solely directed at the inquirers of Jones Day and the prosecutors respectively. They were not directed at the public media," Piech's Hamburg-based lawyer, Gerhard Strate, said in an emailed statement.
He said Piech has no intention "to comment in public on what is being circulated as the alleged content of the questioning".
A German media report earlier this week said Piech had informed top directors at VW about potential cheating with diesel emissions tests in the United States six months before the scandal became public in September 2015.
