The five ex-managers and developers, including two aides to former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, are indicted by U.S. authorities for conspiracy to fraud and violation of U.S. environmental rules, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which researched the matter with regional broadcasters WDR and NDR, reported.

A spokesman at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters declined comment.

A sixth person, former VW manager Oliver Schmidt, was arrested in February in Miami as he was about to fly to Germany.

German authorities were unlikely to extradite the five accused to the U.S., Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Under the constitution, German citizens can only be extradited to other European Union countries or to an international court. But leaving Germany could pose the risk of being extradited to the United States from a third country.

VW, the world's largest automaker by sales, admitted to U.S. regulators in September 2015 that it had cheated on emissions tests there using software installed in as many as 11 million diesel vehicles sold worldwide.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; editing by Susan Thomas)