General Motors (GM) still has plenty to deal with in the aftermath of the recall scandal tied to 13 deaths, but one thing it seems they won’t have to deal with is any sort of indictment of the automaker’s CEO Mary Barra.
The New York Times is reporting that GM officials believe Barra will be cleared of any wrongdoing in the scandal after an investigation by former U.S. attorney Anton R. Valukas.
GM is expected to release the report’s findings on Thursday morning.
The automaker is accused of ignoring defects in its cars, which led to deaths for years, and was recently fined $35 million by the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The automaker is still under investigation by the Department of Justice, which may impose a fine that would dwarf those of the DoT and NHTSA.
The automaker hired law firms to look into its massive car recall following deaths related to faulty ignition switches.
The Times reports that David J. Friedman, acting director of NHTSA, said he doesn’t “have any records of” documents proving Barra knew about the problem before GM issued the recall.
Barra has testified twice before Congress on the matter, and became in many ways the public face of the beleaguered U.S. automaker. The Times notes that it has not yet been explained why the CEO of GM did not know about the defects in its cars earlier, despite the fact that the company seems to have known about the faulty ignition switches that led to the crashes since around 2001.
On Tuesday GM reported its best monthly sales results since August 2008.