The former CEO of Audi, the first leader of the Volkswagen group tried in the Dieselgate affair, received a suspended prison sentence on Tuesday in Germany thanks to late confessions about his role in the global scandal. rigged diesel engines.
Rupert Stadler, former boss of the firm with the rings between 2007 and 2018, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, was given a 21-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 1.1 million euros by the Munich Regional Court which had been judging him since September 2020.
He was accused of knowing about the installation of illegal software without intervening to stop it.
The 60-year-old former leader had disputed the allegations since the start of the investigation and throughout the hearings. But he had finally agreed in May to admit his guilt, on the proposal of the court, to benefit from a sentence less severe than the ten years in prison incurred.
The “Dieselgate” caused a worldwide scandal and heavily tarnished the reputation of the German automobile industry.
In 2015, following accusations from the US Environmental Agency (EPA), Volkswagen admitted to having equipped 11 million “EA 189” type engines on its diesel vehicles with software capable of making them appear less polluting. in lab tests and on the road.
Clemency
The two co-defendants of Mr. Stadler in this trial, a former director at Audi and Porsche, Wolfgang Hatz, and his right-hand man at Audi, Giovanni Pamio, have confessed to having manipulated vehicle engines so that the legal values of gas of exhaust are met when tested on a bridge, but not on the road.
They were sentenced on Tuesday respectively to two years in prison suspended with a fine of 400,000 euros for the first and 21 months in prison suspended with a fine of 50,000 euros for the second.
The guilty plea procedure and the relative leniency of the sentences proposed by the court have drawn criticism in Germany in view of the scale of the case.
“A gigantic economic scandal, millions of customers deceived worldwide, billions of euros in fines for the company – and the only senior leader tried so far gets off with such a lenient sentence? “, was carried away the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The prosecution estimated that Rupert Stadler, a trained financier, had caused damages of up to 69 million euros, corresponding to the wrongful marketing of 26,546 vehicles during the incriminated period.
Unanswered questions
The Volkswagen group has since had to pay more than 30 billion euros in reimbursements, damages and legal costs, the largest of which in the United States.
While Mr. Stadler is the first senior Volkswagen Group executive to be convicted in the scandal, his trial leaves unanswered questions: Who started the fraud? What other Volkswagen executives knew about it and let the fraud continue?
All eyes are on the court in Brunswick, not far from the automaker’s historic headquarters, where another major criminal trial kicked off in September 2021, involving four former Volkswagen officials charged with fraud.
Hearings are scheduled until 2024 but still without the main defendant, the former CEO of the first European manufacturer at the time of the scandal, Martin Winterkorn, exempt from trial for medical reasons.
Investors are also claiming legal compensation, while the title of VW had collapsed by some 40% in the days following the outbreak of the scandal.
Other legal aspects remain open, such as in France where the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed in March the indictment for aggravated deception of Volkswagen. The German group is not alone here, the manufacturers Renault, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat-Chrysler having also been indicted in mid-2021.
The slag of its sulphurous past will still accompany for a while the first European manufacturer led today by Oliver Blume, a manager who came from the Porsche subsidiary to lead the group’s transition to electric and resist the rise in power of Chinese competitors. .