Rupert Stadler
According to the prosecutors, the ex-Audi chief may face several years in prison.
Düsseldorf, Frankfurt The lawyers at Rupert Stadler to edit her most important post: 429 pages, full of internals and accusations of what happened Audi, launched on July 30, 2019 by the public prosecutor’s office in Munich II. Stadler was originally able to explain this until November, thanks to the extension of the deadline, three more months were added.
The prosecutors’ allegations: fraud, indirect misrepresentation and criminal advertising. He is said to have neither caused tampering with diesel vehicles nor known about them for years. But in the investigation of the scandal, it is said to have failed, so that further manipulated cars were sold.
According to the prosecutors, Stadler could face several years in prison. They emphasize that the diesel scandal not only caused immense damage, but also led to a loss of reputation in the German auto industry and thus in Germany as a business location.
The case shows technical inability, management failure and loss of control
Given this dimension, the investigators summarize that the punitive framework should be largely exhausted. In the case of fraud, the sentence is up to five years’ imprisonment, and in particularly severe cases, such as large losses of property, up to ten years.
The public prosecutors interviewed Stadler four times in the summer of 2018, then he broke off the interrogations. What Stadler had previously explained was not enough for them. They investigated further – and finally brought charges against the top manager.
A mammoth process is looming. 64 JS 22724/19 is the file number for a case that could offer material for exams by law students. It already offers teaching material for future engineers, business economists and psychologists.
Technical inability, management failure and loss of control all have a place in Germany’s biggest car scandal. If the regional court permits the procedure, the ex-boss would have to answer in court from autumn 2020.
It is hardly a consolation for Stadler that he is probably not alone in the dock, not even as the main defendant. Three other men in Munich would then possibly have to answer, to which the prosecutors attribute that they had caused the manipulation or started it. Meanwhile, there are worlds between them and Stadler in terms of power, influence and remuneration.
The ex-head of AudiEngine development, Wolfgang Hatz, as well as the engineers Giovanni Pamio and Hans Lehmann * are said to be responsible for damages of up to 3.3 billion euros. Stadler for 27.5 million euros. That is 0.8 percent of the damage that was caused under his aegis. Stadler always rejected all allegations, as did Hatz.
Stadler’s happiness is his ignorance
The lawyers of Pamio and Lehmann did not want to comment on the indictment when asked, but Stadler’s luck, the indictment shows, is his ignorance. The investigators date the beginning of the scandal on January 22, 2008. “We won’t make it without shit,” wrote an Audi engineer to his colleagues at the time.
As a result, a team of conspirators is said to have installed a shutdown device for exhaust gas purification in diesel engines. In tests by the authorities, the cars complied with the exhaust gas limits, but largely not on the road.
Because defeat devices are clearly illegal in the United States, the 77,894 Audis sold there were only scrap, according to prosecutors. In the US market, this resulted in a good 97 percent of the damage assumed by the investigators, for which the accused should be responsible. Just not Stadler.
Audi diesel engines were manipulated for years, and for years the cars emitted many times the permitted emissions. But the boss knew nothing about it – says the boss. The investigators found nothing that would clearly prove the opposite. For this reason, they “only” accuse Stadler of not doing more in the scandal than he just did from September 24, 2015.
According to the public prosecutor, it was the day that Stadler had positive knowledge that Audi diesel engines were or could be affected by the manipulations for the European market. But Stadler, according to the accusation, accepted the buyer’s deception and allowed the dirty diesel cars to be resold, and the public prosecutor is now presenting him with the bill. 120 398 Audis were still sold after Stadler knew that they should not have been sold. Audi had to call them back later and update them with a software. The cost for this was 228.82 euros per car; This is how the 27.5 million euros accused are brought about. Stadler also denies this 0.8 percent share of the damage that his company caused in the diesel scandal in the eyes of the prosecutors.
There was no doubt about Stadler’s suitability for large tasks
He had very different goals. Stadler turns 57 in March. It was long agreed that he would one day take on the largest position that the German automotive industry has to offer. He has been in since 1990 Volkswagen Group, as ex-office manager of Patriarch Ferdinand Piëch, Stadler was considered a confidant of the partner families. In 2007 he took over from Martin Winterkorn as Audi boss when he was called to Wolfsburg. Winterkorn was 68 years old when the diesel affair broke out in 2015. Stadler was ready.
Nobody had any doubts about its suitability. In 2008, the first financial year that Stadler was solely responsible for, Audi closed with a record result: 3.1 billion euros in profit. So it went on. Audi sold more and more cars, employees received higher and higher bonuses, Stadler became a multiple income millionaire and the figurehead of the German economy. awarded by the Strategy Circle of the auto industry. He was honorary senator at the University of Erlangen, honorary professor at the University of St. Gallen and holder of the Bavarian Order of Merit.
Three years before his company’s biggest crisis broke out, Stadler wrote in an essay: “The respectable businessman in business and society must once again become the model for cooperation based on morality and trust.”
Then, the investigators judge, he failed. A few days after the US environmental authorities exhausted the fraud at the parent company VW public, there were first clear indications to the management in Ingolstadt that Audi was also affected. Stadler did not stop selling, and in November the information situation hardened.
For a year and a half, sales simply continued as before
A senior engineer reported to the board that Audi also installed a shutdown device for vehicles in the United States. Previous internal assessments that the United States was not manipulated have proven to be wrong. At the latest, according to the investigators, Stadler should have examined how the situation in Germany and Europe looked.
Stadler only looked in the direction of the US market: “Dear Audians, hardly a day has passed without news on the diesel issue in two months,” he wrote to the workforce on November 25, 2015. He had traveled to the USA with experts to explain the facts to the authorities. “You can rely on us to fully investigate and fully clarify the circumstances,” wrote Stadler. “We are ourselves, we owe our brand!”
Correctional Facility Augsburg
Rupert Stadler was in custody for 142 days.
Was that only for buyers of the brand outside Europe? In any case, Stadler wrote nothing about problems on this side of the Atlantic and probably did little to find them, the prosecutors complain.
And when the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) initially signaled that it considered the European Audi engines to be legally compliant, it started asking skeptical questions in December 2015. On January 25, 2016, the Jones Day law firm reported to the Management Board that the justification model for legally compliant exhaust systems may be wrong.
The sale of the cars continued for almost a year and a half as if nothing had happened. The Audi company headquarters was searched in March 2017, the KBA put pressure on the group with inquiries, and the German environmental aid published strikingly increased emissions from Audi engines. On June 13, 2017, the then VW boss informed Matthias Müller then Stadler about the fact that engineers had found shutdown devices for two types of Audi engine – one for the Audi A8, one for the Porsche Cayenne, both for the European market. The KBA asked Audi to recall 14,000 vehicles.
Gap between postulated willingness to provide information and actual information
According to the public prosecutor, Stadler has given low priority to coping with the diesel crisis. In the beginning, it was only superficial, later it was done selectively – and until mid-2017, only if Audi was urged to do so from the outside. In the eyes of the prosecutors, the corporation did only as much as absolutely necessary. When, for example, the KBA asked about the warm-up operation of certain engines, Audi only examined these engines. The management apparently never got the idea of proactively testing other aggregate systems.
Stadler explained to the investigators that he had no knowledge of the manipulations on the engines for European cars. Before January 2016, there was no evidence of this. When the manipulation of Audi-US engines became known, a quick inspection for Europe was arranged and exchanged with the KBA. He had been signaled that the European vehicles were not affected by manipulations.
The prosecutors do not accept this. Stadler’s defense lawyers’ objection that even the KBA had not issued a warning system by June 2017 did not apply. On the contrary: the argument is downright absurd. Anyone who provided insufficient information to ensure that the KBA only received extracts from the facts could not later rely on its assessment. At first he apparently didn’t notice the massive fraud that was happening in his company. Then he obviously didn’t take him seriously.
“I’m not worried about the future,” said Stadler when Audi was searched in March 2017. In December 2017, he announced that he would dissolve the “Task Force Diesel”. As an “external sign that we can gradually switch from crisis mode to regular operation”.
There are words stuck to Stadler. The gap between postulated willingness to provide information and actual information can hardly be explained, say investigators. Several of the chosen means were simply unsuitable. The charges against Stadler, the accused, were inadequate. The investigators therefore expressed doubts about the objectivity of the internal intelligence unit.
Stadler himself was never able to dispel this distrust. In December 2017, he said that the diesel crisis would end, and in February 2018 he told the Handelsblatt that he was accepting responsibility. Four months later, he told the Bayerischer Rundschau that after the diesel crisis ended, he and his wife were planning a pilgrimage to Santiago to find inner peace. But before that, Stadler says, he will find a way out of the crisis for Audi: “I will solve the problem and lead the company into the future.”
20 million euros in severance payments are on hold
Nine days later, investigators searched Stadler’s private apartment, and a week later the Audi boss was put in custody. The investigators had tapped Stadler’s phone and caught him complaining that an Audi employee had opened up to the prosecutors – and then thinking about how to deal with the employee. A possible leave of absence was discussed. The investigators saw the imminent danger – the fact that the witness was cold could have served as a signal for others. Stadler remained in custody for four months because of the risk of blackout.
The manager himself always stressed his innocence. He hit the table to get the engineers to talk, he said. But they would not have told him the truth. One reason for this could also be in Stadler’s position. The group was tailored to Piëch and Winterkorn. Stadler was more of an administrator for them. Stadler is a financier, not a technician, employees founded this view. He cleverly interweaved with the Porsche / Piëch family. He was an important informant, said a member of the clan.
This loyalty was one reason why he was able to stay in office despite the scandal. It is said that the former VW boss Matthias Müller had wanted to kick him out because Stadler was late with the educational work. The family veto saved him – at least temporarily – when Stadler was allowed out of his cell at the end of October 2018, he was rid of his chief position at Audi. His settlement – allegedly 20 million euros – is on hold. Since then, Stadler has made itself publicly rare.
His fate under criminal law is now in the hands of Stefan Weickert. Stadler is also an unusual counterpart for the presiding judge. So far, Weickert has had to judge smaller cases, a cook who stabbed his girlfriend in a drug frenzy. Or a drug dealer who ran into a police officer during a vehicle inspection.
Weickert was recently promoted to the job. Alexander Kalomiris was originally intended for the process. But Kalomiris now rules at the Bavarian Supreme Regional Court. For Weickert, a year younger than Stadler, the case is the largest of his career. And no matter how it ends – for Stadlers it is probably the end. * Name changed by the editors.