Four former Volkswagen executives have been found guilty of fraud for their roles in the decade-old “Dieselgate” scandal.
After nearly four years in court, their trial ended on Monday with jail time for two executives: diesel development manager Jens Hadler and Hanno Jelden, head of drive electronics.
Two other former employees received suspended sentences from the court in Braunschweig, near the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg.
Former VW development board director Heinz-Jacob Neusser, the highest-ranking defendant, was given a 15-month suspended sentence. Another former department head Richard Dorenkamp, responsible for exhaust management and the “Clean Diesel” programme, was given a 22-month suspended sentence.
The verdicts come almost a decade after US authorities uncovered widespread manipulation of diesel emissions in September 2015, with software programmed to switch on filtering during tests and switch off while on the road.
As a result, VW-brand vehicles with the software in “real drive” scenario were emitting levels of toxic nitrogen oxides far higher than legal limits.
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“The authorities certifying the cars weren’t told that the emissions were much higher in real drive,” said Christian Schütz, presiding judge at Braunschweig regional court. “It’s crystal clear that this wasn’t in line with the law.”
No verdict was delivered against disgraced former chief executive Martin Winterkorn. He resigned days after the scandal broke and has consistently denied all knowledge of the fraud. The case against the 78-year-old, originally part of the trial that ended on Monday, has been suspended indefinitely due to reported health problems.
The managers were charged in 2019 with conspiring to equip vehicles with emission-software manipulation involving nine million cars sold in Europe and the US, later reduced to fewer than four million vehicles.
During proceedings over 170 days in Braunschweig, defence lawyers for the four men described their clients as corporate scapegoats for a wider conspiracy.
The judge said in his verdict that the four accused men had given “deliberately untruthful or inaccurate” testimony but he agreed that many more people were involved in the global VW diesel fraud.
Another 31 former company employees are facing legal action as a result of the Dieselgate manipulation that, to date, has cost VW an estimated €33 billion.
In 2018 Volkswagen settled a criminal probe in Germany with a €1 billion fine, without admitting guilt. A year earlier in the US the company agreed to pay a €4.3 billion fine with admission of guilt. Even after the deal, former VW manager Oliver Schmidt was arrested and imprisoned after he arrived in Florida.
His direct superior, Neusser, was said to have direct involvement in creating the software “defeat device” used to control exhaust filters.
Neusser was one of five executives charged by the US in January 2017 for involvement in the scandal. Until now he had avoided prosecution because Germany doesn’t extradite its citizens to countries outside the EU.
While the convicted men are likely to appeal their verdicts, it is unclear whether the case against the ailing Mr Winterkorn will ever proceed – let alone reach a verdict.
