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Interest in the start of the trial is expected to be very great, while only a few can be accommodated in the special room adjacent to the mythical and infamous Stadelheim prison.
In front of the counter are two Audi employees, named by the authorities only as Giovanni and Henning, Porsche engine developer Wolfgang Hatz, and then one of the brightest stars in the German auto industry, 57-year-old Rupert Stadler.
He had a long career at Audi and in 2007 became CEO of the automotive giant. But in June 2018, it ended. First, a search was carried out at Stadler’s house, and then the entire automobile world was shocked when the Audi CEO was arrested by the police for being taken into ordinary custody.
Until then German authorities had proceeded cautiously after colleagues in the United States revealed the “diesel gate,” the sprawling tangle in which the Volkswagen Group tricked its cars through exhaust checks despite emitting too many toxins. .
The alarm came from the organization ICCT (International Council for Clean Transportation). Since then, the same organization has reported in estimates that diesel accounts for a very large proportion of the at least around 400,000 premature deaths, nearly one death per minute, that exhaust gases cause worldwide each year.
Of course, Audi can only be linked to a fraction of that, and Stadler is not being prosecuted for any deaths or other health consequences. Rather, the indictment is aimed at misleading car buyers and, according to German media, includes fraud, falsification of documents and false marketing.
Both Stadler and Hatz he has rejected all suspicions and promises strong defense figures in the complicated protracted process. The trial is expected to last more than two years, until December 2022. If the men are found guilty, they risk 10 years in prison.
It is far from the only legal sequel. Martin Winterkorn, the former head of the entire VW group, was kicked out of “dieselgate” in 2015 and has since kept a low profile at his home in Germany because he would risk severe punishment if US prosecutors approached him.
In late 2019, German prosecutors also brought charges against Winterkorn, in addition to the auto giant’s current CEO Herbert Diess and President Hans Dieter Pötsch. But at least Diess and Pötsch reached a settlement after a few months, when VW paid nine million euros in exchange for the charges being dropped.
He’s a spitting thief in this context. In total, VW around the world, primarily in the United States, has paid at least SEK 3.1 billion in fines, damages and compensation. And the last word is not said, the compensation processes continue both at home in Germany and in other countries.
