S. Korean Prosecutors Search BMW Seoul Office Over Suspected Cover-Up of Engine Defects
The raid was part of the prosecution’s formal investigation into BMW after Seoul police handed over the case to prosecutors in November 2019. In 2018, the South Korean Transport Ministry said that BMW knew about the issue back in 2015 because, in October of that year, it had set up a special working group to study a defective element of the exhaust gas…
MOSCOW, September 16 (Sputnik) – Prosecutors and investigators searched on Wednesday BMW Korea’s main office in downtown Seoul as part of the investigation into the German automaker’s suspected attempts to conceal problems with its cars’ exhaust systems that caused dozens of vehicles to catch fire, the Yonhap news agency reported.
According to the media outlet, as many as 20 law officers from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office visited the office and the server storage of the luxury vehicles company.
The raid was part of the prosecution’s formal investigation into BMW after Seoul police handed over the case to prosecutors in November 2019.
In 2018, the South Korean Transport Ministry said that BMW knew about the issue back in 2015 because, in October of that year, it had set up a special working group to study a defective element of the exhaust gas recirculation system, while the company itself claimed that it had not learned about the defects until July 2017.
Around 40 BMW cars reportedly caught fire in South Korea in 2018, with the largest number of incidents occurring during the summer months. As a result, the company was forced to recall about 172,000 vehicles.
In August of that year, the South Korean authorities banned the use of all BMW vehicles that had not undergone safety inspections and launched an investigation into the incidents.