Rupert Stadler, former Audi boss settles for plea bargain in diesel fraud trial

 

MUNICH – Rupert Stadler, the former boss of German luxury carmaker Audi is negotiating a plea bargain in the trial over falsified emissions values in the company’s diesel cars.

The Munich court’s presiding judge Stefan Weickert said on Tuesday that the court was offering Audi’s ex-boss Rupert Stadler a suspended sentence of between one and a half and two years – the same offer made to other defendants who make full confessions.

The prosecution “could live with it” if Stadler had to pay a fine that ran into the millions of euros, he said.  Stadler’s lawyers said they were interested in concluding the proceedings.

Another meeting with Stadler’s defence lawyers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, the judge said. Stadler and other co-defendants are facing charges relating to the manipulation of exhaust emissions from diesel engines. Stadler has maintained his innocence since the start of the case.

The former head of Audi engine development who later became a Porsche board member, Wolfgang Hatz, made a confession at the trial on Tuesday, although in his case, the prosecution rejected the proposed plea bargain.

According to a preliminary assessment by the court’s economic criminal division, Stadler should have realized by July 2016 at the latest that the exhaust emission values of the diesel vehicles could have been manipulated. He should have addressed the matter and informed business partners, rather than allowing the continued sale of the vehicles, according to the assessment.

Hatz admitted that he had arranged for software to be designed so that diesel engines emitted levels of nitrogen oxide that were acceptable under testing conditions, but not on road journeys.
This meant the carmaker did not have to retrofit larger Adblue fuel tanks in order to meet emissions levels prescribed by the law.

In his confession, read out by his defence lawyer, Hatz said that he had seen and accepted the possibility that inadmissible defeat devices had been installed.
His statement came after the court proposed a suspended sentence in exchange for a full confession, including the payment of €400,000 ($441,485).

Hatz’s defence team agreed but the prosecution demanded a prison sentence without probation, saying Hatz held a senior post and was responsible for considerable damage and made his confession very late.

The court reached a plea bargain in the case of a co-defendant, a senior engineer who is to receive a suspended sentence on payment of €50,000.Stadler and Hatz have been held in pre-trial detention for several months and both have been saying until now that they were innocent since the trial began two and a half years ago.

Stadler has said that the company’s technicians had deceived him. Hatz argued that he had already left Audi when the manipulations began. Two co-defendants, both senior Audi engineers, made confessions in 2020.

In the case against an engineer known as Giovanni P. under German privacy laws, the court announced a plea bargain on Tuesday. In agreement with the prosecution and the defence, he is to be given a suspended sentence of between one and a half and two years on payment of €50,000 to the state treasury and charitable organizations.

The proceedings against the other co-defendant engineer, who had appeared as a state witness, were discontinued by the court three weeks ago. The trial is to continue on Wednesday.
Whether their sentences are suspended or not, if convicted, the defendants will have to pay the court costs, likely to run to high six-figure sums in each case, according to a lawyer.

Public prosecutor Nico Petzka also justified the demand for Stadler to pay millions in a suspended sentence by pointing to the millions he earned as company boss in 2016 and 2017.
Weickert, the judge, quoted from a statement to the court by his defence lawyer Thilo Pfordte that said Stadler owns two houses and eleven condominiums in Ingolstadt and Munich, and has €1.3 million in the bank, though he also has high debts.