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The four former Volkswagen directors are found guilty of fraud in connection with Dieselgate. This comes 10 years after the discovery of an emissions fraud scandal that cost the company more than 32 billion euros.
A German district court on Monday sentenced VW’s former head of diesel engine development to four and a half years on Monday, receiving two years and seven months, according to a court spokesperson. Two more interrupted sentences were handed out.
The Braunschweig Court’s verdict ends the nearly four-year trial, but the conclusion is far from the end of the prosecutor’s attempt to reveal how widely known emissions fraud is within the company. A court spokesman said four criminal cases against a total of 31 defendants are still pending.
Volkswagen is also facing another civil lawsuit, with investors seeking damages on the ground that the company failed to notify the market in time of its use of illegal emissions software.
For the trial, the prosecutor gathered more than 75,000 pages of evidence to establish who knew or helped orchestrate it in the company’s leadership.
Several senior executives, including the chairman of the Supervisory Committee, avoided trial after VW paid €900,000 to settle market manipulation claims in 2020, but former CEO Martin Winterkohn remains under criminal prosecution.
Wintercorn, who denied the charges, was originally part of a trial that ended Monday, but his case was separated after he alleged that health issues were preventing him from appearing in court.
The lawsuit against the former VW boss was scheduled to resume last year, but in January Braunschweig Court cancelled all future hearings.
Former CEO Martin Wintercorn ©Marcus Prell/EPA/Shutterstock
Few VW employees have been convicted of fraud in the diesel emissions scandal. The company has installed software on millions of vehicles to make it look much more environmentally friendly than it actually is.
The only senior VW director to serve prison time for his involvement in the scandal is Oliver Schmidt, former director of environmental and engineering affairs in Michigan. In 2017, Schmidt was sentenced to seven years in prison by a Detroit court after being arrested while on vacation in the United States.
In 2023, former Audi boss Rupert Stadler pleaded guilty to fraud by omission in a Munich court, but was sentenced to avoid prison and suspended instead.
VW said Monday it was not involved in a “criminal lawsuit” on Monday and does not expect the verdict to have “significant consequences” on the ongoing civil lawsuit.
