Tuesday 07 May 2019 3:55 pm | Updated: Wednesday 05 June 2019 9:11 am

Dieselgate: Porsche hit with €535m fine after selling cars with emissions cheating Volkswagen and Audi engines

Prosecutors in Germany have slapped a €535m (£485m) fine on sports car maker Porsche, as punishment for lapses in supervision which let the company cheat diesel emissions tests.

The company’s development department neglected its legal obligations, said prosecutors in Stuttgart, which ultimately led to the firm selling diesel cars which gave off excessive levels of pollution.

Porsche, a unit of Volkswagen Group, was caught up in the latter’s decade-long emissions cheating scandal known as dieselgate after some of its cars used Audi and VW engines. Porsche, however, stressed today that the luxury car brand itself “has never developed and produced diesel engines”.

The fine comes after Volkswagen was hit by a €1bn find for management lapses by prosecutors in Braunschweig, and an €800m penalty issues against Audi last year. Former Volkswagen chief exec Martin Winterkorn was last month chearged with fraud for his alleged part in the scandal.

The parent company has so far shelled out around €30bn (£26bn) in the wake of the scandal, recalling around 11m vehicles across its VW, Audi and Skoda brands. Former Audi boss Rupert Stadler was arrested in Munich last year in relation to the scandal, but was never charged and subsequently released.

Porsche said it would not file an appeal against the notice for negligent breach of duty, and that VW had already made a provision for the “potential risk of payment obligations” from it. “Porsche AG will take the financial impact of the notice into account in the second quarter,” it added.

As a result of not filing an appeal, the procedure against Porsche has now “concluded,” the luxury car maker said. Volkswagen shares fell 2.4 per cent today.