In the billion-dollar investor trial against Volkswagen and its main shareholder Porsche SE in the context of the diesel scandal, the court heard the first witness. Former Volkswagen human resources director Horst Neumann (74) said on Wednesday before the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court that he only learned about this at the crisis meeting of the group’s board of directors on September 22, 2015 Emissions scandal experience. In previous years, technicians had repeatedly reported problems with the approval of the TDI diesel engine with the identifier EA189 in the USA, but described them as solvable. There was no mention of manipulating the emissions values. He cannot remember any threat of fines prior to publication by the US environmental authorities EPA.
For him and other board members, the extent of the emissions manipulation was “terrible news”. “For me, my world has collapsed,” Neumann said in court. Almost every hour in the board meeting it became clearer how many diesel cars were “contaminated” with the defeat device. He doesn’t know anyone on the board who knew about it beforehand. The then CEO Martin Winterkorn (76) “slumped further and further” during the dramatic meeting.
In the years before that, be with Volkswagen It became clear that exhaust gas purification on diesel engines was more complex than the technicians had initially imagined. In mid-2015, development directors reported: “We are having problems with approval.” However, engineers said they had it under control. He didn’t hear anything about it after that. “That was the situation until September 22nd, when the big bang came.” Then it became clear to everyone that the engine could not be saved. He still painfully remembers the “Clean Diesel” advertisement, in which a white handkerchief was held in front of the exhaust to show that the exhaust gases were clean.
86 witnesses and no end
The Higher Regional Court decided in July to hear a total of 86 witnesses in order to provide information about what happened before the diesel scandal became known eight years ago. Among them is CEO Winterkorn, who resigned after the scandal became known in 2015. It is not known whether he is exercising his right to refuse to testify. Also the former Audi-Boss Rupert Stadler (60), the has appealed against his conviction in the emissions trial before the Munich Regional Court, is supposed to testify as a witness in Braunschweig. A decision on Stadler’s possible right to refuse to testify in view of the pending appeal proceedings was postponed.
Investors are demanding a total of nine billion euros
The 3rd Civil Senate of the Higher Regional Court has been negotiating for five years on a model lawsuit brought by the Sparkasse fund company Deka Investment due to price losses suffered as a result of the VW emissions scandal. The plaintiffs – mostly institutional investors – accuse Volkswagen and the defendant Porsche Holding allege that they kept the information about “Dieselgate” secret for a long time, thereby causing them to lose the value of their shares. Volkswagen counters this by saying that the price relevance only became apparent through the publication of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on September 18, 2015. Compensation for the emissions scandal, primarily fines, damages and legal fees, has so far cost Volkswagen more than 32 billion euros.
The sum of investor claims amounts to a total of nine billion euros. Around half of these claims are with the Braunschweig Regional Court. In the event of a judgment in favor of Deka, the plaintiffs can enforce their claims there. Even after five years, there is no end to the process in sight. The court had only set further hearing days until the end of 2024.