Rupert Stadler Trial: Former Audi CEO’s Involvement in the Dieselgate Scandal

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Rupert Stadler, the former chief executive of Audi, is on trial in Germany over the so-called “dieselgate” scandal that rocked the automotive industry in 2015.

The 60-year-old Stadler avoided a real prison term thanks to a deal with justice concluded last month. In return, he pleaded guilty to negligence leading to forgery.

As a result, the former top manager, who insisted on his innocence for most of the process, was sentenced to a suspended sentence of one and nine months, as well as a fine of 1.1 million euros.

The essence of the scandal

In September 2015, it was revealed that Volkswagen, as well as its subsidiaries Porsche, Audi, Skoda and Seat, were using software to artificially lower the emission levels of their diesel vehicles when tested in a laboratory.

Real pollution figures were hidden from both car owners and regulators.

By the time the fraud was revealed, the fraudulent software had already been installed on 11 million cars that went on sale.

In 2018, the police arrested Stadler, who by that time had headed Audi for 11 years and was a member of the board of directors of Volkswagen, but assured that he knew nothing about the deception.

Volkswagen’s official position was that the fraud was the work of a few mid-level employees, and the company’s top management was in the dark about what was happening.

However, Stadler admitted last month that even after learning of the hoax, he didn’t inform salespeople about it, leaving thousands of cars with incorrect pollution readings on sale until 2018.

Crime and Punishment

In addition to Stadler, two more defendants were involved in the case.

The first of these is Wolfgang Hatz, a former top manager at Audi and Porsche, who briefly led the Audi engine development team.

In April, he also pleaded guilty, admitting that he personally helped engineers install fraudulent software. For this, the court sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 400,000 euros.

The third defendant, one of the Audi engineers, who also pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 50,000 euros.

Martin Winterkorn, a former chief executive of Volkswagen’s parent group, was to be the main defendant in the dieselgate case. However, the investigation into his role in the fraudulent scheme was delayed indefinitely due to the defendant’s medical condition.

Dieselgate was the biggest industrial scandal in post-war German history.

If you count fines, compensation to car owners and legal costs (mostly in the US), the deception has already cost the German auto giant Volkswagen about 30 billion euros.

2023-06-27 15:08:08
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