Fines and suspended sentences were awarded to the former CEO, head of engine development and head of thermodynamics at audio for their role in Diesel Gate emissions cheating scheme.
Rupert Stadler, Audi’s CEO from 2010 to 2018, was fined 1.1 million euros ($1.8 million) and given a 21-month suspended prison sentence for negligent fraud. He escaped jail time by confessing in May.
Persecutors wanted to pay a fine of 2 million euros due to Stadler’s high salary as CEO, as well as his extensive real estate and financial portfolio.
Although Stadler will no longer be in prison, he has been held for more than four months. Once charged, he was arrested and taken into custody in June 2018 because prosecutors believed he might be trying to conceal evidence related to the government’s Dieselgate investigation.
-
Top: Rupert Stadler; Above: Wolfgang Hatz
Wolfgang Hatz, Audi’s head of engine development and later chief engineer for the Volkswagen Group, was sentenced to two years of probation and fined 400,000 euros ($653,000). Prosecutors are still weighing whether they should challenge Hatz’s suspended sentence.
Giovanni Pamio, the former director of thermodynamics in Audi’s engine development division, was given a 21-month suspended prison sentence and fined 50,000 euros ($82,000).
The three men were charged with fraud for knowingly selling vehicles that did not comply with emissions standards. Without a confession, the maximum sentence is up to 10 years.
Stadler is the first Volkswagen Group executive to be successfully tried in the Dieselgate case, in which vehicles sold by Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche are equipped with diesel engines that can software to detect when they are going through the bench. experiment.
During official testing, the engine will shrink its power output to limit emissions, but in the real world, the engine will far exceed emissions regulations. Many of these rigged engines were developed by Audi for use throughout the automaker.
In the United States, Volkswagen markets its TDI-equipped vehicles as “clean diesel”. This deception was discovered after the International Council on Clean Transportation commissioned a study by West Virginia University.
Volkswagen, in September 2015, admitted to installing “beat devices” in some of its diesel cars, but executives insisted the emissions cheating engines were just the work of those further up the food chain.
It is estimated that Dieselgate has cost the automaker at least 30 billion euros ($49 billion) in fines, damages, recalls and remediation.
The whole scandal also led the company to switch from diesel to electric vehicles and spurred the development of the MEB architecture that now underpins Volkswagen ID. 3, ID. 4 and ID. Buzz, as well as Cupra was bornSkoda Enyaq iV, etc.
