Rupert Stadler in court on Tuesday
The former Audi boss was given a suspended sentence for fraud.
(Photo: AP)
In the Volkswagen emissions scandal, former Audi boss Rupert Stadler was the first top manager to be convicted of fraud. Stadler will receive a suspended sentence of one year and nine months, the Munich Regional Court announced on Tuesday.
This left the criminal division in the middle of the one-and-a-half to two-year period already agreed with Stadler and the public prosecutor. The 60-year-old has to pay the agreed amount of 1.1 million euros partly to the state treasury and partly to several non-profit organizations.
The court also imposed suspended sentences and fines on the two co-defendants. For the former Head of Audi Engines and later Porsche Board Member Wolfgang Hatz, it is two years and 400,000 euros, for the engineer Giovanni Pamio one year and nine months and 50,000 euros.
Audi trial: defendants had confessed
The Munich trial is one of the most prominent cases in the 2015 scandal involving millions of emissions manipulations in the Volkswagen Group, in which Audi played a key role. The 60-year-old Stadler is the first former member of the group’s board of directors to be convicted.
After more than two and a half years of trial, the court proposed a deal to the accused in March: If there were confessions, there would be suspended sentences with monetary conditions, then nobody would have to go to prison. The three men then fully admitted the allegations.
Wolfgang Hatz
The public prosecutor’s office had demanded a prison sentence of three years and two months without parole for the former head of Audi engine development.
(Photo: dpa)
Hatz and Pamio have confessed to having manipulated engines. According to the indictment, legal exhaust gas values were met on the test bench, but not on the road. “I hereby fully admit the allegations against me,” Hatz had his defense attorney Gerson Trüg explain to the court.
The lawyer said that the “formative elements of the software” were known to the former head of Audi engine development. This also applies to the fact that the manipulations were not reported to the authorities. “I didn’t behave according to my responsibility,” Hatz explained, regretting this.
Stadler, on the other hand, was not accused of any active manipulation. After the scandal broke in the USA, however, he is said to have failed to stop the sale of the affected cars in Germany. Stadler has admitted this for its part.
“I see for myself that more care would have been required,” lawyer Ulrike Thole-Groll said on his behalf in mid-May. “I didn’t know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been damaged as a result, but I recognized it as possible and accepted it with approval.” He could have intervened, but failed to do so. He very much regrets that.
More on the diesel scandal
In the case of Stadler and the engineer, the public prosecutor’s office supported the deals negotiated with the court. In Hatz’s case, however, the prosecutors had balked at the court’s proposal, demanding a prison sentence of three years and two months.
Nevertheless, the public prosecutor’s office was “very satisfied” in an initial reaction. The court moved within the framework of the agreement reached during the course of the process and deviated “only a few months” from the request of the public prosecutor, said spokeswoman Andrea Grape on Tuesday, but the verdict will be examined before deciding on appeals. All three judgments are not yet final.
Processing of the VW emissions scandal in court continues
The conclusion of the process is only the first chapter in the criminal investigation of the diesel scandal. Four former VW executives are on trial in Braunschweig, including former brand executive Heinz-Jakob Neußer. The case of the former CEO Martin Winterkorn was separated due to health problems of the accused, but is to be tried later.
It is expected that the first criminal trial in Braunschweig will not be completed until next year. The charges against other ex-Volkswagen managers have already been filed there.
In the case of Audi, too, another main hearing is likely to begin soon. The second charge by the Munich II public prosecutor’s office is directed against the former development directors Ulrich Hackenberg and Stefan Knirsch, the former purchasing director Bernd Martens and the now retired developer Richard Bauder. In the past, the accused always rejected the allegations. With agency material.
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