MADRID: Seat, the Spanish subsidiary of German group Volkswagen, installed over 500,000 cars made in Spain with the now infamous software to cheat pollution emission tests, daily newspaper El Pais reported on Thursday.

Volkswagen faces a US criminal investigation and worldwide legal action after admitting that as many as 11 million of its diesel cars are equipped with software capable of fooling official pollution tests.

“The Spanish subsidiary of the German group has installed over half a million of the tampered diesel engines into its vehicles since 2009,” El Pais wrote citing unnamed sources with ties to the company. The diesel engines used by Seat are in theory the same ones used by Volkswagen and Audi in the US, the newspaper said. — AFP