In the fraud process surrounding the diesel scandal at Audi, one of the accused engineers wants to achieve a lenient sentence with a comprehensive confession. The engine developer Giovanni P., who had previously admitted joint responsibility for the exhaust gas manipulations, confessed to the allegations made against him before the Munich Regional Court on Tuesday.
At the hearing, the Italian explained to his defense attorney, Walter Lechner, that he knew that the so-called defeat devices could not be in line with the law. The court had previously expressly missed such an admission and therefore only evaluated earlier statements by the engineer as a partial admission. There is a risk of up to ten years in prison. The accused and his lawyer reacted to pressure from the court on the 162nd day of the trial. The presiding judge Stefan Weickert had threatened this engineer, the co-defendant former Audi boss Rupert Stadler and the former Audi engine boss and Porsche board member Wolfgang Hatz with a conviction for fraud. It carries up to ten years in prison. After two and a half years of trial, Weickert sees enough evidence for a conviction. In the case of comprehensive confessions, however, suspended sentences are possible, the judge said a week ago. Stadler and Hatz, who have always rejected the allegations, have not yet commented on them. Their defense lawyers agreed with the court on Tuesday that there would be a further period of reflection until the second half of April. Judge Weickert said the proceedings against engineer Henning L. would be discontinued for a fee of 25,000 euros. The money should benefit two environmental and nature conservation associations. Prosecutors dropped their charges of fraud, indirect false certification and criminal solicitation against this man. The lowest-ranking of the four defendants so far is therefore considered innocent. The trial is one of the most prominent legal proceedings in the processing of the diesel scandal at Volkswagen and its subsidiary Audi. The scandal involving millions of manipulated emissions values was exposed in September 2015. The Munich criminal trial has been running since September 2020. According to the indictment, the engineers are said to have manipulated engines in such a way that they complied with legal emission values on the test bench, but not on the road. Audi boss Stadler is said to have failed to stop the sale of the manipulated cars after the scandal became known.
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