The defenders of the former AudiBosses Rupert Stadler (60) and the two co-defendants in the diesel fraud process called for suspended sentences in their closing speeches on Tuesday. The Munich Regional Court has already promised all three confessed defendants. The verdict is to be announced next Tuesday. The defense lawyers also used the opportunity to clearly criticize the public prosecutor’s office.
She used the “flamethrower” from the start and did not complete the investigation before the charges were brought, said Gerson Trüg, defense attorney for the former head of Audi engine development, Wolfgang Hatz (64). It has – perhaps also in a race with the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office for the first diesel trial in Germany – have to go fast. This is one of the reasons why the trial lasted more than two and a half years and the difference between the charges and the “thin” evidence is large.
Stadler’s defense attorney Thilo Pfordte accused the public prosecutor of populism and a contradictory assessment of witnesses and the amount of damage. The lawyers for the accused engineer P. accused the public prosecutor’s office of having adopted questionable investigation results from US lawyers during the investigation. The USA brutally exploited the diesel scandal in favor of their own car industry.
Public prosecutor calls for detention for Hatz
Stadler and Hatz did not have a final word, P. once again apologized. The Economic Criminal Court has promised all three suspended sentences of between one and a half and two years. In addition, Stadler should pay 1.1 million euros, Hatz 400,000 euros and the engineer 50,000 euros. In the course of an agreement with the court and the defense, the public prosecutor’s office agreed with Stadler and P. For Hatz, however, she is demanding a prison sentence of three years and two months without parole.
All defense attorneys cited the pre-trial detention, the length of the trial and the enormous costs, and advocated suspended sentences at the lower end of the range specified by the court. The procedural costs alone would be over one million euros, plus lawyers’ fees for several thousand hours, calculated P.’s lawyer Walter Lechner. His client is now facing bankruptcy.
Hatz, P. and another engineer confessed that they initiated the design of the engine software. With illegal defeat devices, diesel cars did comply with the nitrogen oxide limit values on the test bench, but not on the road. The car manufacturers wanted to save themselves the time-consuming subsequent installation of larger AdBlue tanks for exhaust gas cleaning after they had previously miscalculated.