Gov't imposes heavy fines on Nissan, BMW, Porsche

Gov't imposes heavy fines on Nissan, BMW, Porsche. January. 03, 2017 07:11. by Hyun-Seok Lim lhs@donga.com.

The South Korean government has made a final confirmation on the falsely reported documents from Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. and two German automakers, BMW and Porsche, taking back its approvals and imposing the three companies with fines worth a total of 5.92 million U.S. dollars.

The Ministry of Environment, which found signs of fabrication on Nov. 29 last year, announced to take such measures on Monday after conducting hearings against the three auto companies.

As a result, the approvals on 10 models – Nissan's Infiniti Q50 and Qashqai; BMW’s X5M; and Porsche’s Macan S Diesel, Cayenne SE-Hybrid, and Cayenne Turbo - have been cancelled. In addition to the four models no longer produced, a sales ban will be imposed on the six cars, which are currently on sale. Nissan has been slapped with 2.64 million dollars on two models, BMW with 305,000 dollars on one model, and Porsche with 2.97 million dollars on seven models.

According to the ministry, the three car importers have been deemed in violation of Article 55 under the Act on Preservation of Atmospheric Environment as they got approvals by using the test documents of other irrelevant car models.

The ministry also announced that it reported Nissan Korea to the prosecution on charge of fabricating license documents. BMW, whose breach was relatively minor, and Porsche, which voluntarily reported to the prosecution, have been excluded from the charge.