A German court said on Wednesday that former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler is ready to plead guilty in the ‘dieselgate’ saga. Upon reaching an agreement with the Munich district court, Stadler will make the guilty plea in lieu of receiving a suspended sentence and a fine.
According to a court spokesperson, the ex-Audi chief will receive a prison sentence of up to two years and a fine of $1.2 million. Stadler’s trial began in late 2020 and up until last week, he refused to plead guilty. However, after pleading guilty, the auto executive’s confession is expected to be read out in two weeks.
Notably, Stadler joined the company in 1990 and had been with Volkswagen ever since. He became Audi’s CEO in 2007 and joined VW’s management board three years later. However, after the scandal broke out, Stadler went to jail temporarily in 2018 before being laid off by the company.
The emissions-cheating scandal first broke out in 2015 and rocked the entire automobile world. Audi’s parent company Volkswagen which also operates subsidiaries such as Porsche and Skoda admitted it had installed software to rig emission levels in 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide. During the court proceedings, VW admitted that the cheating dated back to 2006.
The cheating device allowed vehicles to appear less polluting in lab tests than they were on the roads. Research conducted by the University of West Virginia discovered that certain VW cars emitted up to 40 times the permissible levels of harmful nitrogen oxide when tested on the road.
ALSO READ | Volkswagen ‘dieselgate’ fraud: Timeline of a scandal
Former Audi exec pleads guilty
Stadler’s admission comes barely a week after Wolfgang Hatz, a former top executive at Audi pleaded guilty. Hatz confirmed that he and two other colleagues arranged the installation of banned software to rig emissions in diesel vehicles.
Hatz’s lawyer said the defendant “recognised and accepted” that in Germany the software would be considered an illegal defeat device and could also violate American laws.
In March, the Paris Court of Appeal rejected a request by VW to dismiss charges of deception in a separate diesel emissions investigation in France. The auto giant argued that it could not be charged a second time for a similar offence, having already paid $1.1 billion in fines in Germany in 2018.
(With inputs from agencies)
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