Courts have been negotiating the VW diesel affair for years to clarify who is responsible. Today, ex-VW boss Winterkorn appeared in court for the first time. He testified as a witness in the billion-dollar investor trial.
Long-time Volkswagen boss Martin Winterkorn testified as a witness in the billion-dollar investor trial against VW and its main shareholder Porsche SE because of manipulated emissions values.
Before the Higher Regional Court in Braunschweig he denied responsibility for the illegal shutdown devices. He was not involved in the decisions about the development or use of the shutdown device.
It is the first time that Winterkorn has spoken out about the diesel scandal in court. So far, the 76-year-old had only spoken on the topic to the Bundestag investigative committee and to the law firms commissioned by VW. His hearing is initially scheduled for two days.
“Neither demanded, encouraged or tolerated”
“I neither demanded nor promoted this function or tolerated its use,” he continued in front of the court in Braunschweig. Winterkorn said in a short statement that he only found out about the problems late and incompletely.
Initially, he assumed that VW would quickly find a technically and legally flawless solution for diesel vehicles in the USA. “If I had been given a complete picture, I would not have hesitated to tackle the events directly and clarify them.”
The investor process is primarily concerned with the question of whether Volkswagen and Porsche informed investors too late about the extent of the diesel scandal. For five years, the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court has been negotiating a model lawsuit brought by the Sparkasse fund company Deka Investment due to price losses suffered as a result of the VW emissions scandal.
The plaintiffs – mostly institutional investors – accuse Volkswagen and the defendant Porsche Holding of keeping the information about “Dieselgate” secret for a long time, thereby causing them to lose the value of their shares. Volkswagen counters that the price relevance only became apparent through the publication of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on September 18, 2015.
Scandal broke in 2015
In 2015, under pressure from the EPA, Volkswagen admitted that it had manipulated diesel emissions values using software. This ensured that the engines met the nitrogen oxide limits on the test bench, but emitted many times more of these toxic exhaust gases on the road. The scandal triggered a large number of lawsuits.
Winterkorn resigned in September 2015 a few days after the car manufacturer’s emissions manipulation became known, but a little later claimed that he had not known anything about illegal activity before the scandal was made public. After Herbert Diess and Matthias Müller, Winterkorn is the third former CEO to be questioned on the matter by the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court.
In June 2023, the former head of the Volkswagen subsidiary Audi, Rupert Stadler, was sentenced by the Munich regional court to a suspended sentence and a fine worth millions.
Torben Hildebrandt, NDR, tagesschau, February 14, 2024 12:55 p.m