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On Wednesday, the former chairman of the board of the automaker Audi, part of the German Volkswagen Group (VW), filed a criminal lawsuit in Munich on charges of fraud in connection with the group’s diesel scandal.
According to the indictment, Rupert Stadler learned of the tampering with the diesel engines in September 2015 at the latest through the outbreak of the VW diesel scandal, but gave instructions to market the products in question and did not prevent them from being sold. With that, he committed fraud. His crime involves around 250,000 Audits and 71,000 Volkswagen and 112,000 Porsche for which Audi supplied the engine.
Rupert Stadler is the first manager of the company to go to court in Germany over the VW diesel scandal. In addition to fraud, they have also been accused of helping document false claims and spreading infringing advertising that misleads consumers into making false claims. Charges were also brought against three senior development engineers who were involved in the development of engineered diesel engines for Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche.
Rupert Stadler has been the boss of Audi, which operates an engine plant in Győr since 2007, was indicted in 2018 for the diesel scandal and was fired from the company in 2019. The former manager of the company denies knowing of the tampering.
The VW diesel scandal began in September 2015 when the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused the group of companies of installing software on the exhaust gas cleaning equipment of 482,000 diesel vehicles that detects the conditions of the measurement. Therefore, the car produces a fraction of the actual nitrogen oxide emissions in the tests, that is, it cheats in the test. VW acknowledged the fraud.
Of the nearly 11 million vehicles involved, 8.5 million were sold in the European Union.
VW is the largest player in the automotive industry, and the group includes Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda, as well as Ducati sport motorcycles, as well as Scania and MAN. The trucks are also made by VW, MTI reported.
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