Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation in to Toyota’s ongoing safety problems, Toyota said Monday.

In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission a federal investor protection agency will examine what Toyota officials told their investors, the company said.

Two U.S. House committees will question Toyota executives on Tuesday and Wednesday hoping to get answers to questions ranging from when the company knew about reported problems with unintended acceleration to what it did to fix the problem. 

Investigators did not say which U.S. laws the Japanese company might have broken.

They could look in to violations of product safety laws or whether the company made false statements to a federal safety agency, said Peter Henning, Wayne State University law professor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission requested documents from Toyota in order to find out what the company knew about the problems that lead to three massive waves of recalls in from December 2009 to February 2010.

House Investigators said they believe Toyota tried to avoid blaming electronic defects for causing the unintended acceleration in their cars and then mislead the public in to thinking the recalls would solve all problems.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who will run Tuesday’s hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote a letter to the Japanese car maker.

In it he cites various complaints of car owners and accuses the company of not catching the majority of cars with problems by the recalls of more than 4 million cars with sticky gas pedals and malfunctioning brakes.

Stupak also thinks Toyota relied on a flawed engineering report with a too narrow sample to solve the problems.

Since admissions or apologies in front of the House could make Toyota liable in the criminal investigation, experts expect American and Japanese company officials to try to limit their testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce as well as the Oversight and Government Reform Committees.

Dozens of U.S. Toyota dealers and employees will come to Capitol Hill this week on the occasion of the hearings to lobby politicians and assure them that Toyota did everything to keep its cars safe for consumers.