South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday seized hundreds of Volkswagen and Audi vehicles for suspected violation of the permissible emissions standard, a media report said.
The Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office, which has been investigating the German automaker's emissions fabrication case, confiscated about 950 vehicles parked in a pre-delivery inspection centre in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.
According to the report, the confiscated models include Audi's A1 and A3 and Volkswagen's Golf.
The prosecution said that the models in question were suspected of violating the permissible emissions standard for poisonous gas or failing to get an environment-related approval before being imported and sold.
The report said that those models were also found to have a leakage problem in exhaust tubes.
In March, prosecutors seized a small number of vehicles from the Pyeongtaek centre to see whether emissions test was faked with the models, but the appropriate test results failed to come out due to the leakage problem.
Volkswagen has faced plenty of lawsuits globally after admitting in September 2015 to fabricating emissions test in the United States.
South Korea's environment ministry filed a criminal lawsuit in January against the Audi-Volkswagen Korea.
Also, the local unit of the German carmaker was charged for failing to submit sufficient information on its recall plan even after receiving an order to recall faulty models.
The prosecution said the confiscated models could have violated an air environmental protection law, noting that additional charges could be revealed during the on-going investigations.
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