The story
The Volkswagen assembly plant in Brazil was established after the Brazilian government prohibited the import of fully built-up vehicles in 1953. Its first president was Friedrich Schultz-Wenk who had emigrated to Brazil in 1950 after a brief stint as a prisoner of war, followed by some time in Wolfsburg. Their first plant was in Ipiranga, São Paulo and was a strict knock-down kit operation. In two years 2268 Fuscas and 552 Kombis were assembled there by hand. After Juscelino Kubitschek's import substitution programs began taking effect as Volkswagen was compelled to open a proper factory in São Bernardo do Campo. Work on the factory began in mid-1957. Originally only the Kombi was built locally from September 1957, but from January 1959 the 1200 cc "Fusca" also entered local production, with ever-growing local parts content. In 1959, VW started production at the plant near São Paulo. Nazi war criminal and commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, Franz Stangl, openly worked at the Volkswagen do Brasil São Paulo plant under his real name for 16 years following his escape to Brazil in 1951, before eventually being arrested in 1967 and sentenced to life in prison.
Since the 1970s, workers have been accusing Volkswagen do Brasil of spying on them during Brazil's military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. The former employees put accusations on the firm of allowing its workers to be detained and tortured under Brazil's military rule. VW's security personnel informed the political police on eventual oppositional activities. In 1976, mass arrests occurred and some VW employees were tortured. In 1979, Brazilian VW workers traveled to Wolfsburg to inform the CEO in person.
In 2014, the "truth commission" convened by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff found documents that "dozens of companies, including Volkswagen and other foreign automakers, helped the military identify union activists", including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In subsequent meetings before the São Paulo state commission, VW legal counsel have denied accusations and contested there was no document proving VW had violated human rights.
In 2015, activists and former VW employees in Brazil spoke out in public, accusing the company's silence about the persecution of its workers.
In November 2016, VW commissioned a second expert review of the situation by historian Christopher Kopper of Bielefeld University, which is due end of 2017 after its "chief historian Manfred Grieger quit around the same time as Kopper was appointed." Grieger had recommended to donate a memorial for those whose human rights were violated. In the July 2017 ARD interview, former VW CEO Carl Hahn denied ever having known of security police activities. The Brazilian attorney general has been investigating. The further investigations concentrated on assumed slavery work at a so-called "Fazenda Volkswagen", a Volkswagen owned cattle farm in rural Amazonia.
From Wikipedia’s article on Volkswagen do Brasil, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4