Wolfsburg, Germany (dpa) - Volkswagen is planning a complete reorientation of its management structure in response to the series of scandals over the falsification of tests on its exhaust emissions, its newly appointed CEO said Thursday."We will not allow the crisis to paralyze us," Matthias Mueller said, as senior management at the company headquarters in Wolfsburg confronted the scandal in public for the first time. "We will use it as a catalyst to make the changes Volkswagen needs."The company would not be destroyed, even though the fall-out from several related scandals was serious.The first scandal over nitrogen oxide emissions from VW‘s diesel-powered cars broke in the United States in September, followed later by revelations about carbon dioxide emissions from its petrol-powered cars.Structures and ways of thinking would be changed, Mueller announced. Among the changes are greater decentralization at executive management level.VW management is focusing on a relatively small group in looking for those responsible for the diesel scandal - which is by far the more serious."We believe it probable that only a limited number of staff contributed actively to the manipulation," Hans Dieter Poetsch, the chairman of the VW supervisory board, said.Poetsch said that 1,500 electronic data storage devices had been collected and 87 extensive interviews conducted.Some 450 experts were working to clear up the emissions scandal, with the aim of having a complete overview by the time of the annual general meeting on April 21 next year, he said.VW has set aside 6.7 billion euros (7.3 billion dollars) to deal with the financial fall-out, with huge court cases pending in the US in particular.Poetsch described the scandal as one of the greatest tests in the history of Europe‘s largest carmaker, adding that the financial consequences would be "considerable.""Everything will be on the table, nothing will be swept under the carpet," he said.He attributed the diesel scandal to VW‘s attempt to make a breakthrough in the US market in 2005, when the company found itself lagging the competition.US consumers have been less ready to switch to diesel than has been the case in Europe, where diesel-powered cars have been seen as more efficient and as producing fewer carbon dioxide emissions as compared with petrol-powered cars.The company had been unable to find a way to meet US standards on emissions of oxides of nitrogen, and this had resulted in the software manipulation, Poetsch said.But he insisted that senior management had been left in ignorance. "We have no knowledge of the involvement of the board of directors or the supervisory board," Poetsch insisted.
