In the fraud process surrounding the emissions scandal Audi the former company boss Rupert Stadler (60) announced a confession. Stadler and his defense attorneys said Wednesday at the Munich Regional Court that Stadler agreed with the court’s deal proposal. The Economic Criminal Court had given the accused the prospect of a suspended sentence if he made a comprehensive confession and paid 1.1 million euros.
After Stadler had denied the allegations of fraud for years, he announced after more than 160 days of the trial that he would admit the allegations that were still pending. The confession should be filed in two weeks, as Stadler’s lawyers Thilo Pfordte and Ulrike Thole-Groll said. A verdict is expected in the coming weeks. Judge Stefan Weickert has threatened Stadler with a prison sentence of one and a half to two years, which is now to be suspended on probation.
The process is one of the most prominent legal proceedings in the handling of the diesel scandal Volkswagen and the subsidiary Audi. The scandal involving millions of manipulated emissions values was exposed in September 2015. Stadler has been on trial since September 2020, along with the former Audi engine chief and Porsche-Head of Development Wolfgang Hatz (64) and an engineer.
Stadler failed to stop manipulated cars
Hatz and the engineer confessed to having manipulated engines. According to the prosecution, this means that legal exhaust gas values were met on the test bench, but not on the road. Audi boss Stadler is said to have failed to stop the sale of the manipulated cars after the scandal broke.
According to a preliminary assessment by the Economic Criminal Court, Stadler should have recognized by July 2016 at the latest that the exhaust gas values could have been manipulated. Instead of getting to the bottom of the matter and informing the trading partners, he allowed the sale of the cars to continue until the beginning of 2018.
The court considers most of the charges to be as good as proven. Judge Weickert had therefore threatened all three accused with imprisonment of one and a half to two years, which could be suspended on probation if they confessed. In the case of the engineer, the prosecutor agreed to such a deal, but not in the case of Hatz. However, the court is not bound by the decision of the public prosecutor.
Rupert Stadler became head of the Ingolstadt VW subsidiary in 2007, succeeding Martin Winterkorn (75), who was moving to the top of the group at the time. From June 2018, Stadler was held in custody in Augsburg for four months due to the risk of collusion, until he resigned as Audi boss and VW board member. He had already reached a civil settlement with the Volkswagen Group and paid 4.1 million euros to his former employer for breach of duty.