German prosecutors filed charges against former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler and three other defendants in connection with the 2015 Volkswagen Group emissions cheating scandal.
Prosecutors said that Stadler was aware that thousands of Volkswagen vehicles had illegal software allowing them to cheat on emissions tests, but failed to prevent them from being sold, CNN reported. Stadler was with the company from 1990 until his arrest last June, when he became the most senior official taken into custody.
“The public prosecutor’s office in Munich said Stadler and three other defendants are being charged with fraud, false certification and criminal advertising practices,” Reuters reported on Wednesday. “The defendants charged by the Munich prosecutor include former Audi and Porsche manager Wolfgang Hatz as well as two engineers, several people familiar with the proceedings said.”
Sadler’s lawyer told reporters that he denies any wrongdoing. Hatz’s lawyer said the same for his client.
Many thought the Volkswagen emissions scandal had already been fully exposed. In September 2015, the company admitted to evading pollution rules with the illegal engine control software and has since shelled out more than $33 billion in fines.
But more facets are still coming to light, Jack Ewing wrote in the New York Times on July 26. Documents uncovered recently by German journalists demonstrate Audi executives’ willingness to break the rules.
“‘We won’t make it without a few dirty tricks,’ an employee in Audi’s diesel motor development department wrote in an email to colleagues in January 2008,” Ewing reported.
“Trapped between Volkswagen’s aspirations and the laws of physics, Audi engineers devised an ingenious but illegal workaround,” Ewing continued. “They installed software in the engine computer that could recognize the telltale signs of an official emissions test. If regulators were looking, the software would temporarily ramp up pollution controls to be compliant. In everyday use, the cars produced emissions far above legal limits.”
This week Audi released a statement saying, “Our company continues to cooperate fully with the investigating authorities in order to clarify the circumstances that led to the diesel crisis. This clarification is a prerequisite for the successful new start,” CNN reported. “The presumption of innocence continues to apply to all defendants until the allegations have been clarified.”
