Park Dong-hoon, former chief executive of Audi Volkswagen Korea, heads to the Seoul High Court in this Sept. 3, 2021, file photo. Yonhap

The Supreme Court upheld Tuesday a lower court's decision that sharply reduced a fine imposed on Audi Volkswagen Korea and cleared the company of most of the charges in its diesel emissions scandal.

The top court said it approved a Seoul High Court ruling last September, ordering the South Korean unit of the German carmaker to pay a 1.1 billion won ($921,000) fine, instead of a 26 billion won fine ordered earlier by a district court.

It also confirmed the appellate court's decision to commute the sentence for Park Dong-hoon, former chief executive of the Audi Volkswagen branch, from two years in prison to an eight-month suspended term.

The company was indicted in January 2017 after its imported cars were found to be fitted with "defeat devices" that lowered their emissions during government tests.

In February 2000, the Seoul Central District Court ruled the company violated laws on pollution, customs and advertising in connection with about 15 models of 120,000 diesel vehicles it imported from 2008 to 2015.

The appellate court overturned the decision in September last year, saying the prosecution's evidence was insufficient to fully prove Park and company officials knew of the manipulation. The court also rejected the previous guilty verdict on charges of importing about 41,000 vehicles without the government's certification on emissions and noise or replacing their parts after such tests. But it upheld the lower court's ruling that convicted the company of doctoring 149 documents related to emissions and noise tests for vehicles imported from 2010 to 2015.

However, the top court ruled that a former Audi Volkswagen executive, surnamed Yoon, in charge of emissions approval, will have to serve a prison sentence of one-and-a-half years, as ordered by the appellate court. (Yonhap)