General Motors India is likely to be charged with corporate fraud over the Chevrolet Tavera recall issue says a government panel. The American automaker in July had issued a recall for over 1.14 lakh units of its MPV manufactured between 2005 and 2013 for emission-related issues.
The government report says that the wrongdoing was carried out with the full knowledge of the top officials of the company who were present between 2005 and 2012. Reports suggest that the company had written to the government saying that an internal probe into the issue had revealed that its employees had fitted approved and tested engines in place of non-compliant engines and then sent the vehicles for testing once again.
The company at the end of July terminated the services several employees including Anil Mehrotra, CFO and Sam Winegarden, global VP of engine engineering. However, the matter is not is not expected to end there as the probe panel has recommended a penalty for GM. Chevrolet has now restarted production of the Tavera and it is once again on sale.
However, the probe panel has also said that it does not hold any of the government officials involved or ARAI guilty of wrongdoing. GM has refused to comment on the issue and has said that it will make a statement once it sees the report and gets word from the government on the issue. The panel has also recommended various measures like Conformity of Production (CoP) test to improve standards and make vehicle testing norms more stringent.
