GM internal investigation reveals no cover-up in ignition switch scandal

General Motors Co. has fired 15 people and disciplined five others in connection with the faulty ignition switch scandal that is responsible for at least 13 deaths and 47 crashes, the company’s CEO Mary Barra announced Thursday.

GM has also announced it will set up a victims’ compensation fund to be administered by Ken Feinberg, the man who oversaw similar funds for the survivors and spouses of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing. The program is expected to begin taking claims by Aug. 1.

Speaking at the company's technical center in Warren, Michigan, Barra addressed an estimated crowd of nearly 1,000 employees as the largest U.S. automaker announced the findings of an internal investigation into why it took more than a decade to finally recall vehicles with the safety defect.

While Barra acknowledged a pattern of "incompetence and neglect" that she blamed on "individuals" who failed to "disclose critical pieces of information" about the ignition switches, she said there was "no conspiracy by the corporation to cover up facts."

Furthermore, she said the internal investigation "found no evidence that any employee made a trade-off between safety and cost" in failing to deal with the safety problem.

With the release of GM's internal investigation, Congress is expected to announce a new round of hearings on the matter soon.

But the internal investigation found senior executives were not to blame for a delayed vehicle recall involving the defective ignition switches, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Barra, who has been CEO for only a few months, began her remarks with a message to victims’ relatives. She offered her "deepest sympathies to the families that lost loved ones and to those who were injured. I realize there are no words of mine that can ease their grief or their pain."

Her remarks were broadcast to GM's 220,000 workers globally.

The source confirmed that the report concluded that Barra, executives who reported directly to her, the board of directors and former CEO Dan Akerson did not know about the defective switches before December.

It also found that GM's general counsel, Michael Millikin, was not responsible for the mishandling of defects and the recall delay, the source said. Millikin, who led the internal probe with former U.S. prosecutor Anton Valukas, is expected to continue working at GM.

The move to spare top executives from blame drew some sharp criticism.

“How do you truly fix a culture of carelessness and cover-up without cutting the head off the snake?” said Robert Hilliard, a lawyer for a plaintiff in a lawsuit against GM related to the ignition switch defect.

Barra said Valukas interviewed 230 employees and reviewed a massive number of documents to produce the report, which makes recommendations to avoid future safety problems.

Barra called the internal investigation "brutally tough and deeply troubling."

"I hate sharing this with you just as much as you hate hearing it," Barra told employees in a town hall meeting at GM's suburban Detroit technical center. "But I want you to hear it. I want you to remember it. I want you to never forget it." She promised to "fix the failures in our system."

The crisis began in February, when GM recalled 780,000 older-model Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 small cars because of defective ignition switches. GM soon added the Saturn Ion and other small cars to the recall, which ballooned to 2.6 million cars worldwide. The company has recalled over 15 million vehicles worldwide for a range of issues.

The switches in the cars can slip out of the "run" position and shut down the engine. That disables the power-assisted steering and brakes and can cause drivers to lose control. It also disables the air bags. GM says at least 13 people have died in crashes linked to the problem, but trial lawyers suing the company put the death toll closer to 60.

Last month GM paid a $35 million fine — the largest ever assessed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — for failing to report the problem quickly to federal regulators. GM knew about problems with the ignition switches as early as 2001, and in 2005 it told dealers to tell owners to take excess items off their key chains so they would not drag down the ignition switch.

In 2006 an engineer at GM approved a change in the switch design, but did not inform the government or change the corresponding part number. In subsequent years that made it harder for other GM engineers to figure out why older Cobalts performed worse than newer ones.

Al Jazeera and wire services