Ex-VW boss Martin Winterkorn
Photo: AFP
Former VW boss Martin Winterkorn also has to go to court on charges of market manipulation.
This was announced by the competent chamber of the Braunschweig Regional Court on Thursday.
This means that there will be criminal proceedings against the ex-manager not only in parallel fraud proceedings, but also because investors were allegedly informed too late in the diesel scandal.
The court declared that Winterkorn should "have deliberately failed to inform the capital market in good time despite knowledge of the installation of an inadmissible defeat device (...) and the considerable financial risk that has been emerging since spring 2015 (...)".
The indictment of the Braunschweig public prosecutor's office was therefore admitted to the main hearing unchanged.
Did the VW top deceive investors?
The prosecutors had also accused the current Volkswagen group boss Herbert Diess and the chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, of market manipulation.
In their case, however, the proceedings were discontinued in return for monetary payments of 4.5 million euros each.
At the time the emissions scandal was exposed, Pötsch was the automaker's CFO.
After the manipulation of millions of diesel engines became public in September 2015, the VW share price crashed temporarily.
Investors are deceived and are demanding billions in damages in a civil lawsuit.
Winterkorn's lawyer Felix Dörr had accusations that his mandate had known early on about the impending extent of the diesel crisis, initially "with all determination" rejected: "Prof. Dr. Winterkorn had no early knowledge of the targeted use of a prohibited engine control software in US diesel -Car, "said the lawyer.
"Essential information that would have enabled him to correctly classify known problems with US diesel engines did not reach him at the time."
The public prosecutor and the regional court saw it differently.
Winterkorn also has to go to the dock in Braunschweig for commercial and gang-related fraud, together with four other VW executives, some of them formerly.
Originally, the public prosecutor's office was "only" out for serious fraud.
However, the district court is of the opinion that "buyers of certain vehicles from the Volkswagen Group were deceived on a large scale about their properties, in particular the use of a so-called disconnection device in the engine control software".
Icon: The mirror
beb / dpa
