The economic criminal chamber of the Munich Territorial Court has sentenced this Tuesday the former CEO of Audi, Rupert Stadler, to one year and nine months of probation and to pay a fine of 1.1 million euros for the plot manipulation of emissions in diesel vehicles known as dieselgate.
The dieselgate case was uncovered in 2015 with the accusations by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the Volkswagen group for having equipped 11 million engines with software capable of making them appear less polluting in laboratory tests and highway, thus causing a scandal that seriously damaged the reputation of the German automobile industry.
Stadler, who for years had defended his innocence, acknowledged on May 16 that he was responsible for modifying engine emissions. Stadler confessed to having been negligent in the controls, for which he ended up accepting that the vehicles were put up for sale with unauthorized software and having omitted information from Volkswagen partners.
According to the report of the preliminary evaluation of the court in Munich, Stadler found out about the manipulation at the latest in July 2016. Therefore, he allowed the tampered cars to continue to be sold until the beginning of 2018. The prosecution estimated that, due to the commercialization misappropriation of more than 26 thousand vehicles, had caused damage for a total of 69 million euros.
In addition to Stadler, the former director of Audi and Porsche, Wolfgang Hatz, has also been sentenced to two years in prison with suspended sentence and a fine of 400,000 euros and his right-hand man, Giovanni Pamio, to 21 months in prison and a fine of 50 thousand euros.
So far dieselgate has cost Volkswagen more than 30,000 million euros in refunds, compensation and legal costs, most of them in the United States. Investors in the company are also seeking legal redress as it plunged nearly 40% in the days after the scandal.
Now all eyes are on the Brunswick court, where another criminal case was opened in September 2021 against four former Volkswagen executives accused of fraud. There are hearings scheduled until 2024, but without the presence of the main defendant for dieselgate, the former president of the company, Martin Winterkorn, who was excused from trial for medical reasons.
