South Korean Prosecutors Really Know How to Make Auto Execs Sweat

There’s a good chance that the former managing director of Audi Volkswagen Korea will soon find himself pleading for a sip of Coke during the 11th hour of a grueling interrogation process.

Park Dong-hoon, now CEO of Renault Samsung Motors, was recently identified as a suspect in South Korea’s investigation into the Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal, according to Wards Auto. That means a date with the “VIP Suite.”

No, there isn’t champagne and members of the fairer sex pretending to be moderately interested in what you do for a living. The room inside the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office is where white-collar suspects in South Korea go for questioning, which can last up to 12 hours. A prison cell is nearby in case prosecutors want to quickly pick up where they left off the day before.

Park ran Volkswagen’s Korean importing operations from 2005 to 2013. Initially called into the VIP Suite this week as a material witness, prosecutors quickly labelled him a suspect, meaning he can expect another date with the room on July 8.

According to Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, “Seoul Prosecutors suspect the German head office was aware of problems regarding the emissions of vehicles equipped with Euro 5 EA189 diesel engines, based on emails transacted between the local unit and headquarters from 2010 to 2011.”

The 63-year-old executive told media that he was unaware of the defeat device-equipped diesel engines while at the helm.

Korean Volkswagen and Audi sales rose exponentially after he took the post — volume went from under 1,000 units before he arrived to over 30,000 when he left the company a decade later. Thanks to the scandal, sales are now sliding fast. June sales were 57.6 percent lower than the same month in 2015.

German authorities have their own grilling to do. Prosecutors in Volkswagen’s home country singled out ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn and brand chief Herbert Diess as suspects in the scandal.

[Image: SalFalco/ Flickr]