The former Audi boss Rupert Stadler is negotiating a confession in the process of embellished emission values for diesel cars. The presiding judge Stefan Weickert said that the court had given Stadler a suspended sentence of between one and a half and two years if he made a full confession.
The public prosecutor “could live with it” if Stadler had to pay a probation condition in the millions. Another meeting with Stadler’s defense attorneys is planned for Tuesday afternoon, the judge said.
Hatz has already confessed
The former head of Audi engine development, Wolfgang Hatz, made a confession at the trial, although the public prosecutor’s office rejected the settlement proposed by the court in his case.
According to preliminary assessments by the Economic Criminal Court, Stadler should have recognized by July 2016 at the latest that the emission values of diesel cars could have been manipulated. He should have got to the bottom of the matter and informed the trading partners. Instead, he continued to tolerate the sale of the cars.
Hatz admitted that he had initiated the development of the software with which the nitrogen oxide limit values of the diesel engines were observed on the test bench, but no longer on the road. This saved the carmaker from having to retrofit larger AdBlue tanks for exhaust gas cleaning. In the confession read out by his defense attorney, Hatz explained that he had recognized the possibility and accepted that inadmissible defeat devices had been installed.
The court had proposed a suspended sentence and a condition of probation of 400,000 euros for Hatz if he made a full confession. Hatz’s defense agreed, but prosecutors asked for a prison sentence without parole. Because Hatz is responsible for considerable damage in a very high position, and the confession comes very late.
The court reached an agreement in the case of a co-defendant chief engineer. He is to be sentenced to a suspended sentence if he pays 50,000 euros.