In the trial surrounding the Audi diesel scandal, the Munich II Regional Court offered the prospect of a suspended sentence for former CEO Rupert Stadler if he made a confession and paid 1.1 million euros. Defense and prosecutors would have asked for a week to think about it until May 3rd, said the presiding judge Stefan Weickert on Wednesday.
Stadler had protested his innocence for years and had not moved away from the process, which had been going on for two and a half years. But according to the preliminary assessment of the Economic Criminal Court, he should have recognized by July 2016 at the latest that the emission values of diesel cars could have been manipulated. Instead of getting to the bottom of the matter and informing the trading partners, he allowed the sale of the cars to continue. Therefore, a prison sentence for fraud by omission comes into consideration – with a confession also on probation.
In a second conversation about a corresponding agreement on Tuesday, both the defense lawyers and the public prosecutor’s office expressed reservations, said Weickert. Public prosecutor Nico Petzka demanded a condition of probation of two million euros and referred to the houses, condominiums and bank accounts in Stadler’s possession.
Stadler’s lawyers Thilo Pfordte and Ulrike Thole pointed out that Stadler had already paid 4.1 million euros in damages for breach of duty to Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen. In addition, the sentence of one and a half to two years envisaged by the court is too high.
The Economic Criminal Court will not change anything in the penalty framework, said Weickert. Stadler is the highest-ranking defendant and has sufficient assets. The former head of Audi engine development, Wolfgang Hatz, and two of his senior engineers had confessed to initiating the design of the engine software for the illegal defeat device.
Hatz is therefore facing a suspended sentence with a payment condition of 400,000 euros, a co-defendant engineer a suspended sentence with payment of 50,000 euros. The proceedings against the other engineer who appeared as a key witness were dropped.