Former Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, has been handed a suspended 21-month prison sentence and fined $1.2 million. /Angelika Warmuth/Reuters
Ex-Audi CEO Rupert Stadler received a suspended sentence and a fine at the end of his "dieselgate" trial in Germany on Tuesday, making him the first high-ranking executive to be convicted over the emissions cheating scandal that rocked the car industry in 2015.
In line with a plea deal agreed last month, Stadler avoided jail time in return for admitting to fraud by negligence.
The Munich district court instead handed Stadler a suspended sentence of one year and nine months and ordered him to pay a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million).
The 60-year-old admitted in May that he allowed vehicles potentially equipped with manipulating software to remain on sale even after learning of the scam.
German car giant Volkswagen -- whose subsidiaries include Porsche, Audi, Skoda and Seat -- plunged into crisis after admitting in September 2015 that it had installed software to rig emission levels in 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
The so-called defeat devices made the vehicles appear less polluting in lab tests than they were on the road.
Throughout his trial, which started in 2020, Stadler had denied wrongdoing.
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Stadler, pictured here waiting for his verdict in a Munich courtroom. /Matthias Schrader/Reuters.
But last month at his trial in the southern German city, his lawyer said Stadler had "neglected" to inform business partners that cars with so-called defeat devices were still going on the market.
Volkswagen had always insisted that the diesel trickery was the work of a handful of lower-level employees acting without the knowledge of their superiors.
Stadler himself was not accused of instigating the scam.
Massive scandal
But German prosecutors say Stadler, even after learning of the scam, allowed thousands more vehicles with defeat devices to be sold until early 2018.
Stadler had been Audi's chief executive for 11 years when he was arrested in 2018. He was also a member of the management board at Volkswagen group.
He spent four months in pre-trial detention owing to prosecution concerns that he would try to influence witnesses.
His co-defendant Wolfgang Hatz, a former Audi and Porsche manager, was handed a two-year suspended sentence and fined 400,000 euros.
Hatz, who at one point was head of engine development at Audi, pleaded guilty in April. He admitted to judges that he had helped arrange the installation of emissions-cheating software.
Another co-defendant, an Audi engineer who previously confessed, was given a 21-month suspended sentence and a 50,000 euro fine.
Volkswagen's former CEO Martin Winterkorn was also supposed to stand trial for fraud over the scandal, but his case has been indefinitely postponed due to his poor health.
The saga shocked Germany and is seen as the country's biggest post-war industrial scandal.
It has already cost VW around 30 billion euros in fines, legal costs and compensation to car owners, mainly in the United States.
The fallout has also accelerated development of environmentally-friendly electric vehicles, requiring huge investments in a tough economic climate.
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