Today is the fifth day of negotiations in Audi-Process. And the third day in a row that the defendant Giovanni P. speaks in his defense. The Italian once headed the “Thermodynamics, OBD, Exhaust Aftertreatment” department at Audi. Now he explains in extenso how to do it Manipulation of exhaust gas values at Audi Motoren. He describes it as a creeping process in which the whole company was involved. The many technical details and his hard Italian accent make it exhausting to listen to him.
Should P. come to an end today, his former colleague Henning L. will be on his way from next Tuesday. L. will probably also explain himself for three full days. Then the former Audi head of engine development and later Porsche development board member Wolfgang Hatz (61) and ex-Audi boss Rupert Stadler (57) have their say.
The name Hatz comes up more often when P. speaks, the name Stadler never. It will probably continue like this. The developers, especially the engine developers, were a world of their own at Audi, closer to the developers at the parent company Volkswagen than with the rest of the group. P. and L. Stadler, a business graduate, have probably never been as close as they are now in the courtroom, where the former Audi foreman sits a few meters away.
This beginning of the trial seems symptomatic of the entire prosecution. It looks more like two charges. It is understandable that Stadler’s lawyer Thilo Pfordte right from the start demanded that the proceedings against Stadler be separated from those of the other three. On most of the 181 days of the trial, Stadler will listen to witnesses he has never met and hear statements on subjects in which he was never directly involved.
Nevertheless, Pfordte’s application was rejected yesterday by Judge Stefan Weickert. That was expected, but the question is: how fair is that?
The “imbalance” (Pfordte) of the prosecution is not only that only five of the more than 90 pages deal with the allegations against Stadler – which Weickert dismissed with the remark that there was no point in counting pages.
The allegations against Stadler and against the three engineers are also completely different. The engineers are said to have cheated by manipulating the emission values of engines, Stadler by not stopping the sale of vehicles with manipulated engines.
The prosecutors have gathered a lot of evidence against the engineers; here the prosecution is brimming with witnesses who are named. In contrast, the evidence at Stadler appears not only quantitatively but also qualitatively thinner.
Weickert justifies his decision with the fact that when selecting the accused in the process, one does not have to focus on an alleged core of the allegation. It is about possible criminal offenses across several hierarchical levels and by many participants. This is well represented in the process. “You throw four gladiators into the ring so that they can tear each other apart,” is how one criminal lawyer describes this strategy.
However, it seems questionable how well this reflects the complex reality at Audi. As is well known, the car manufacturer is very closely intertwined with its powerful mother, Volkswagen. Stadler always looked more like a reliable governor than a powerful CEO.
The course of the process will show whether the chosen method serves to establish the truth. Or whether the Munich public prosecutors were primarily concerned with bringing their most prominent accused to the dock in the first trial of the huge diesel scandal complex. Experience has shown that the public’s attention always decreases significantly in later proceedings.
The decision to let Stadler stew for 181 days of trial in the courtroom is very tough. Probably unfair too.