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Rupert Stadler
Photo: Michael Sohn / AP
The trial against former Audi boss
Rupert Stadler
(57)
will begin next Wednesday
.
By the end of 2022, the Munich District Court II wants to decide whether the former top manager and his three co-defendants have to go to prison.
In the first criminal trial of the diesel scandal in Germany, which began on Wednesday, the outcome is completely uncertain.
Stadler and the three co-defendants are charged with fraud, indirect false certification and criminal advertising in the mammoth trial, which is scheduled for 176 days.
The approximately 100-page indictment states that Stadler is said to have known about the exhaust gas manipulation at VW by the end of September 2015 at the latest, and yet continued to operate and advertise the sale of the manipulated Audis.
The 57-year-old Stadler faces imprisonment if he is found guilty.
Because he was involved in the fraud on a commercial basis and is said to have caused a high loss of assets, it is serious fraud - the sentence extends to up to ten years.
The start of the process on Wednesday is likely to be difficult for the former top manager, who is now a consultant, not only because of the impending punishment.
Because the Munich judiciary did not choose the justice center as the venue, but a room in the Munich penal institution Stadelheim - so it is in prison that negotiations are carried out on whether the ex-Audi boss has to go back to prison.
Also ex-Porsche board member Wolfgang Hatz in court
Stadler already spent the summer of 2018 behind bars.
In mid-June he was arrested as the acting Audi boss because he is said to have tried to influence the investigation by tapping a phone call.
He was behind bars for a good four months, shortly before his release, his contract as Audi boss was terminated.
Stadler has so far denied the charges.
Of the four defendants, he is the one whom the prosecution assigns the least guilt: For him, the only question that matters is whether he actually knew about the allegations after the diesel scandal and then should have stopped selling the manipulated diesels.
He is concerned with 120,398 cars, he is said to be responsible for damage of more than 27 million euros.
more on the subject
Second criminal case: ex-VW boss Winterkorn also has to go to court for market manipulation
White-collar crime in top German corporations: They meet in Stadelheim by Angela Maier
Diesel scandal: four other Audi managers charged
The other defendants, on the other hand, are said to have been directly responsible for the manipulation and arithmetically caused loss of 3.1 billion euros for Audi on the US market.
The second prominent manager in the dock is the former Porsche Development
Director Wolfgang Hatz
(61).
Hatz also denies the allegations against himself.
His defense attorney has already announced that he would like to comment "in detail" on the allegations - but he did not want to give details.
Mammoth lawsuits are also threatened in Braunschweig
Also sitting in the dock are
Zaccheo Giovanni P.
and
Henning L.
, who as engine developers and engineers were technically closest to the manipulations.
Both of them incriminated the board members in the investigation process - a lot should therefore depend on their statements in the process.
After five years have passed since the diesel scandal became known and VW had to pay billions in various civil proceedings, the Munich trial is now starting a whole series of criminal proceedings against former responsible parties.
Four other Audi managers were recently charged in Munich.
In Braunschweig,
two charges
are now
admitted
against the former VW boss
Martin Winterkorn
(73).
There, too, there is a risk of mammoth proceedings.
cr / afp
