The fraud process surrounding the VW diesel scandal begins without the former CEO Martin Winterkorn.
The case against the 74-year-old will be separated because of his state of health, said the Braunschweig regional court on Thursday.
This will start the main negotiation of one of the biggest industrial scandals of recent years next week (September 16) against the four co-accused VW managers alone.
The court is about who is responsible for the millions of manipulations of diesel exhaust that was exposed in the United States almost six years ago to the day.
Forecast not possible
The public prosecutor accuses Winterkorn and the four other VW managers of having known about the diesel manipulation. You have to answer for gang fraud and other criminal offenses (Az: 6 KLs 23/19). For a year now, the former Audi boss Rupert Stadler and three other managers of the VW subsidiary have been answerable in a similar procedure before the Munich Regional Court.
It has not yet been determined when the trial against Winterkorn can begin. The court said that a prognosis as to when Winterkorn will be fully or at least partially negotiable after a recent operation is currently not possible. In any case, the separation will not double the total duration of the proceedings. If the trial against the four co-defendants had to wait until the end of the trial, the trial against Winterkorn would probably not begin until the second half of 2023.
In September 2015, under pressure from the US environmental protection agency EPA, Volkswagen admitted that it had manipulated millions of diesel exhaust gas values using a shutdown device. This ensures that diesel exhaust gases comply with the nitrogen oxide limit values on the test bench, but emit many times more of these toxic exhaust gases on the road. So far, reparations have cost Volkswagen more than 32 billion euros, mainly fines and compensation payments in the USA. (Reporter: Jan C. Schwartz; edited by Kerstin Dörr. If you have any questions, please contact the editorial team on 030 2201 33711 (for politics and business) or 030 2201 33702 (for companies and markets)