Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler was found guilty of fraud on Tuesday in connection with the company’s 2015 emission cheating scandal, widely known as the “dieselgate”.
A Munich court handed 21 months of prison sentence to Stadler and ordered him to pay 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) fine as part of an agreement between his lawyers, the judge and prosecutors after he pleaded guilty last month, German news agency dpa reported.
This makes him the highest-ranking executive convicted over cars that cheated on emissions tests with the help of illegal software.
In September 2015, German car giant Volkswagen —whose subsidiaries include Porsche, Audi, Skoda and Seat —admitted that it had installed software to rig emission levels in 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
The rigged devices made the vehicles appear less polluting in lab tests than they were on the road.
Initially claimed innocent
During the initial phase of the trial, which started in 2020, Stadler had denied wrongdoing. But in May, the 60-year-old admitted that he let the vehicles potentially equipped with manipulating software to be sold in the markets even after learning of the scam.
Stadler’s lawyer argued that his client “neglected” to inform business partners that cars with so-called defeat devices were still going on the market.
Throughout the trail, Stadler wasn’t named the main instigator of the scam, even Volkswagen had always maintained that the diesel trickery was the work of a handful of lower-level employees acting without the knowledge of their superiors.
But the German prosecutors argued that Stadler that even after learning of the cheat, allowed vehicles with defeat devices to be sold until early 2018.
For 11 years, Stadler had been Audi’s chief executive until he was arrested in 2018. He was also a member of the management board at Volkswagen group.
He spent four months in pre-trial detention owing to prosecution concerns that he would try to influence witnesses.
Others also charged
Another co-defendant, an Audi engineer who previously confessed, was given a 21-month suspended sentence and a 50,000 euro fine, reports AFP news agency.
Volkswagen’s former CEO Martin Winterkorn was also supposed to stand trial for fraud over the scandal, but his case has been indefinitely postponed due to his poor health.
The “dieselgate” saga shocked Germany and is seen as the country’s biggest post-war industrial scandal.
It has already cost VW around 30 billion euros in fines, legal costs and compensation to car owners, mainly in the United States.
(With inputs from agencies)
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