Former Audi boss Rupert Stadler was the first former VW board member to admit responsibility for the exhaust gas fraud in his group on Tuesday before the District Court 1 in Munich. The procedure will probably end with a suspended sentence for the 60-year-old manager.
Simply further
After the exhaust gas fraud in its parent company Volkswagen was exposed in 2015, Audi simply continued to build cars with a corresponding manipulation of their exhaust gases until at least 2018. In Ingolstadt, people felt safe, despite the fact that some of the technical equipment and components were the same as those installed in VW cars and other brands of the group – and even though some of these had even been developed by Audi. This is how the software for the engine control of certain models came from Audi.
“Fraud by Omission”
For so little awareness of wrongdoing – the accusation is: “fraud by omission” – Stadler was imprisoned, where he claimed for years to have known nothing. The court saw the risk of collusion. Only when the court made it clear to him at the end of March that he was threatened with imprisonment did Stadler decide to take the step. The Economic Criminal Court is of the opinion that he must have recognized by July 2016 at the latest that emissions values could have been manipulated. Instead of becoming active, he had the cars produced and sold unchanged until 2018. Today, Tuesday, he admitted his part in the fraud before the Munich 1 district court. He admitted that “more care” would have been needed.
Deal with the approval of the prosecutor
It had already become clear at the beginning of the month that Stadler wanted to get involved in a settlement proposal from the court, as his defense attorney Thilo Pfordte announced. The deal, approved by the public prosecutor’s office, provided for the payment of 1.1 million euros and a suspended sentence if Stadler completely confesses. Judge Weickert declared the agreement on May 3, after which Stadler asked for a period of preparation.
The court will probably sentence Stadler to between one and a half and two years in prison. The probationary period will then be three years, Weickert announced. The fine is to be paid to charitable organizations.
Fraudulent software came from Audi
The process, which has been running since September 2020, could probably be completed in June with the confession. Previously, the former head of Audi engine development, Wolfgang Hatz, and two of his senior engineers had admitted to having developed the fraudulent engine control software.
It was she who allowed the cars to comply with the nitrogen oxide limits on the test bench, but not on the road. Among other things, the program contained the possibility of recognizing the test bench run. With this measure, Audi wanted, among other things, to save the installation of larger urea tanks for exhaust aftertreatment after realizing that larger quantities of the chemical reactant are required to comply with the limit values.
(Image: EPA
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(fpi)
