German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz was ordered to pay a fine of 20.2 billion won ($16.8 million) in South Korea for making false claims about the emissions levels of its diesel cars.
South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) accused Mercedes-Benz of falsely advertising that its vehicles offered a 90% reduction in nitrogen oxide, in line with the Euro 6 emissions standard.
In fact, the FTC said Mercedes-Benz had installed banned emissions control software in the vehicles used to test emissions levels.
The cars had a "defeat device" that detected when they were being tested and changed the emissions performance to improve results, the FTC said. During real-world driving emissions were worse.
The regulator's ruling covers the period from April 2012 to November 2018 and affects 15 models.
The carmaker said it was co-operating with authorities and had given them its position. The company said that since it had not yet received the decision in writing, it would not comment further for the time being.
This is not the first run-in Mercedes-Benz has had with South Korean regulators.
Two years ago, the Environment Ministry fined the Stuttgart-based carmaker, then still trading under the name Daimler, 77.6 billion won for installing banned emissions software in diesel cars.
The company announced at the time that it would appeal the decision.
Those proceedings concerned vehicles of the Euro 6b emissions standard, the production of which was discontinued by mid-2018 at the latest.
Daimler AG has been called Mercedes-Benz Group AG since February 1.
