ADAC admits making up car award votes
ADAC, Germany's biggest motoring association, has admitted fixing its previously respected car of the year award by lying about how many people cast votes in the contest.
It emerged on Sunday that communications head Michael Ramstetter had bumped up the number of votes cast by ten times to make the VW Golf 2014's car of the year. Bild am Sonntag reported Ramstetter claimed 34,299 were cast for the VW Golf. In reality it was 3,409.
On Monday the Munich-based company admitted that this was just the start of the scandal.
Ramstetter had, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported, lied about participant numbers in at least 2012 and 2013, in order to make the prize, and therefore the company – which has 19 million members – appear more important.
It is unclear how many years the manipulation of the award has gone on for.
http://www.thelocal.de/20140120/adac-boss-cooks-car-award-votes
= new reply since forum marked as read
