Munich, Dusseldorf In the process of exhaust gas fraud at the Volkswagen subsidiary Audi, ex-CEO Stadler has agreed to a confession after more than 160 days of the process. His lawyer Thilo Pfordte said on Wednesday before the Munich II district court that his mandate agreed with the proposal. When asked, the ex-manager confirmed: “Yes.” The explanation of the confession itself should come in two weeks, as Stadler’s defense attorney announced.
Last week, the court had given Stadler a suspended sentence of one and a half to two years and a fine of 1.1 million euros in the event of a confession. Otherwise, Stadler would have faced a prison sentence. Prosecutors also approved the deal.
The process is about who in technical development and on the Audi board knew about the manipulated diesel engines, which ultimately cost the VW group more than 30 billion euros in fines and damages.
Audi is considered to be the nucleus of the diesel scandal surrounding exhaust gas manipulation. Stadler headed the VW premium subsidiary from 2007 to 2018 and was one of the most powerful managers in the group.
According to the preliminary assessment of the Economic Criminal Court, Stadler should have recognized by July 2016 at the latest that the emission values of diesel cars could have been manipulated, as the presiding judge Stefan Weickert made clear a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, he allowed the sale of the cars to continue without informing trading partners and stopping the fraud. Therefore, Stadler could face a prison sentence for fraud by omission.
Rupert Stadler has always denied allegations
The former head of Audi engine development, Wolfgang Hatz, had already confessed last week. “I hereby fully admit the accusations made against me,” the former head of Audi engine development had his defense attorney explain to the court. The “formative elements of the software” were known to Hatz, said lawyer Gerson Trüg.
According to the indictment, Hatz and two other engineers are said to have manipulated engines in such a way that they complied with legal emission values on the test bench, but not on the road. Stadler, in turn, is said to have failed to stop the sale of the manipulated cars after the scandal became known. Both Hatz and Stadler had previously denied the allegations.
However, the court considers the majority of the allegations made in the indictment to be proven after a trial period of around two and a half years. It was based, among other things, on the statements of an Audi engineer who, as a key witness, had supported the judiciary early on in clarifying the scandal and had made a confession. The court had already dropped the proceedings against the co-accused Audi manager at the beginning of April for a fine of 25,000 euros.
The former head of Audi engine development made a confession last week.
(Photo: dpa)
Shortly thereafter, Judge Weickert made the remaining three defendants an offer: in the event of confessions, suspended sentences would be an option. The engineer Giovanni Pamio had then already made a full confession and stated that he knew that the defeat devices in the diesel engines were not in compliance with the law. Hatz then followed him.
In the case of Hatz, however, the public prosecutor’s office – unlike Stadler and Pamio – does not want to agree to a suspended sentence. However, the court is not bound by the prosecutor’s vote.
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 too many 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.
Judgment could come in a few weeks
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 “Taskforce 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 three Audi managers and 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.
More: Ex-Audi top manager Wolfgang Hatz makes comprehensive confession in the diesel scandal