Former Audi boss pleads guilty to Dieselgate charges

The former boss of Volkswagen’s Audi brand has confessed that he suspected emissions cheating before the diesel-emissions scandal was uncovered, raising further questions as to how many VW executives had knowledge of the widespread cover-up.

Rupert Stadler, a former VW board member, on Tuesday told the district court of Munich that he had continued authorising cars for sale even after he “recognised it as a possibility” that the vehicles contained devices that tricked regulators, and by extension customers and investors, into believing they emitted lower emissions.

“I did not know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been harmed as a result, but I recognised it as a possibility,” Stadler said in a statement read out by his defence attorney. “I see for myself that more care was required,” he added.

Stadler’s confession to fraud by omission and false certification is the first by a former high-ranking executive at VW, which has attempted to draw a line behind “Dieselgate” uncovered by US regulators in 2015.

He spent more than two years denying the allegations, but the court earlier this year offered Stadler a suspended sentence and a €1.1mn fine if he admitted to the allegations — a turning point in the case, together with the previous confessions of two Audi engineers charged alongside him. The verdict is expected at the end of June.

Dieselgate is the biggest scandal to have rocked VW in recent years and the company has paid out more than €32bn in legal fees and fines related to the cover-up.

Complaints over the handling of Dieselgate were raised by investors as recently as last week at VW’s annual general meeting. Ingo Speich, head of corporate governance at the top-20 shareholder Deka, criticised the “lack of transparency” towards shareholders over the matter.

“We continue to be extremely dissatisfied with the contribution that [VW’s] supervisory board is making to clarifying the diesel scandal,” he said last week.

Attention will now be turned to the status of three trials of VW’s former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, two of which have been on hold due to the 75-year-old’s ailing health. The one under way in Braunschweig, to establish whether Winterkorn knew of the fraud, is taking place without the participation of the former VW boss.

Before taking the top job at the VW group, Winterkorn had been Stadler’s predecessor at Audi, where the emissions cheating had originated.

The scandal, where VW was forced to admit to having installed software that could manipulate nitrogen oxide tests in close to 10mn vehicles, reverberated across the whole car industry and revealed how companies were pushing the limits on how to exploit loopholes when it came to emissions requirements.

VW said it was not party to the proceedings against Stadler but added that “we are following these proceedings and will closely examine the content of the statements made and their consequences”.