VW to recall 8.5 million vehicles in Europe as Italian police raid offices

Volkswagen said Thursday it will recall a total of 8.5 million diesel vehicles Europe-wide as police raided the carmaker's office in Italy and those of its sports car unit Lamborghini over a global pollution-cheating scandal.

 The massive recall in all 28 of the EU's member states would begin in January 2016 while for countries outside the bloc, the company is still examining which vehicles were affected, VW said in a statement.

 The German auto giant was plunged into the biggest crisis in its history after revealing that it had fitted 11 million of its diesel vehicles with software designed to cheat official pollution tests.

 The revelations have sparked probes in several countries, and Italian police Thursday raided the company's offices in the country and placed six executives under investigation.

 According to the Italian news agency AGI, VW Italy's chief executive Massimo Nordio and Luca De Meo, the marketing and sales chief of the Italian branch of Audi, were among those placed under investigation.

 The raids at VW's Italian headquarters in Verona and Lamborghini's base in Bologna came after Italian consumer rights group Codacons filed a fraud suit on behalf of 12,000 Italian owners over the VW-made vehicles.

 "Our case is that there has been fraud committed at the expense of consumers. If the police establish there has been illegal activity it will further strengthen our suit," the organisation said in a statement.