The former Audi boss will soon have to decide whether to make a confession.
(Photo: dpa)
Munich, Dusseldorf In the process of exhaust gas fraud at the VW subsidiary Audi, the Munich II Regional Court is offering the former CEO Rupert Stadler an end to the proceedings in the event of a comprehensive confession. If Stadler makes a confession by May 3, the court will impose a suspended sentence and a fine of 1.1 million euros. The presiding judge, Stefan Weickert, called the punishment “appropriate and appropriate” on Wednesday. Stadler did not comment on the offer.
The offer is the result of a legal talk that Weickert held with Stadler’s lawyers and the public prosecutor’s office on Tuesday afternoon. The core of the conversation was the possibility of a confession or partial confession by Stadler.
In the event of a confession, there is a suspended sentence of one and a half to two years. Otherwise, Stadler is likely to be sentenced to prison.
The crux of the conversation reproduced by Weickert was apparently the financial situation of the former top manager. According to this, Stadler owns eleven apartments and two houses in Munich and Ingolstadt and has other assets of around 1.3 million euros. The court therefore assumes that Stadler’s assets will continue to be “adequate” in the future, even if he no longer receives any board remuneration. The public prosecutor had demanded a payment of at least two million euros.
Stadler is the most prominent defendant in the first German trial about the emissions scandal, which has been pending before the Munich district court since the end of September 2020. The core of the 165 days of the trial so far was the question of who was responsible at the Volkswagen subsidiary Audi for the mass manipulation of diesel engines and the sale of cars with excessive exhaust emissions, which ultimately cost the VW group more than thirty billion euros and cost a lasting loss of image.
Only Stadler has not yet made a confession
Engine developer Giovanni Pamio and former engine boss Wolfgang Hatz are also in the dock with Stadler. The court dropped the proceedings against a fourth Audi manager at the beginning of April against a payment of 25,000 euros. As a key witness, he had supported the judiciary early on in clarifying the scandal and made a confession.
>> Read here: Ex-Audi top manager makes comprehensive confession in the diesel scandal
Shortly thereafter, the court promised the three remaining defendants a suspended sentence and a fine if they also made comprehensive confessions. The court had a deadline of April 25 for the statements. set. Pamio, and on Tuesday also Hatz, have already responded to the court’s advance with confessions, while Stadler is still hesitating.
Unlike Pamio and Hatz, Stadler is not charged with manipulating the exhaust systems on the Audi engines. Rather, the court accuses the ex-Audi boss of not having stopped the sale of manipulated cars in Europe after 2015.
While Audi and Volkswagen stopped sales in the USA immediately after the fraud was exposed, the group continued to deliver cars in Europe that emitted far too high levels of pollutants with their manipulated software. After questioning its engineers, Stadler allowed production to continue. The developers had assured him that all manipulated software components had been removed from the engines, he argued. In fact, however, the Federal Motor Transport Authority continued to complain about the delivered cars.
In March 2017, the Munich public prosecutor’s office had the Audi company headquarters in Ingolstadt and the development departments in Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt searched. “I’m not worried about the future,” said Stadler at the time. At the end of 2017, Stadler then declared the dissolution of the “Task Force Diesel”, the body that was tasked with internally checking all Audi engines.
At the time, Stadler said that he wanted to switch Audi “from crisis mode back to regular operation”. The investigators saw it differently: on June 18, 2018, they arrested Stadler in his private home in Ingolstadt because of the risk of blackout. Investigators tapped his phone and recorded a suspicious conversation.
Stadler was held in custody for almost four months before being released from prison subject to conditions. But the strong suspicion remained. In July 2019, the public prosecutor charged the four Audi managers around Stadler, and the trial began at the end of September 2020. A judgment could now come in a few weeks, insiders expect the beginning of June.
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