Dieselgate: four former Volkswagen officials face German justice

A former Volkswagen official speaks with his lawyer at the start of the Dieselgate trial in Brunswick, Germany, September 16, 2021. REUTERS - POOL

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

Six years later, Dieselgate is still talking about it.

This Thursday, a criminal trial opened in Braunschweig in Germany against four former Volkswagen officials. 

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They are

four on the dock

.

The first, Heinz-Jakob Neußer, is the former head of group engine development and then technical director of the Volkswagen brand.

The other three engineers, Jens H., Hanno J. and Thorsten D., had held several senior positions in technical development units, from electronics to emission processing systems.

"Organized gang fraud" and "aggravated tax fraud"

The reading of the indictment lasted an hour and a half.

The prosecutor considered that the four defendants had played a central role in the case of the

rigged diesel engines of Volkswagen

, indicates our correspondent in Berlin,

Pascal Thibaut

.

Their goal was, for the prosecution, to maximize the profits of their business to which the bonuses paid to them were linked. 

All are accused of "organized gang fraud" and "aggravated tax evasion" linked to the global scandal which erupted in September 2015, when the first German manufacturer admitted to having rigged 11 million cars so that they displayed levels of emission of nitrogen oxides lower than reality.

The accusation of fraud concerns some 9 million vehicles which were sold in Europe and the United States with damage to customers of "several hundred million euros", according to the accusation.

The tax component covers more than 800,000 euros in taxes not collected by the State, less polluting cars benefiting from more favorable taxation.

Former Volkswagen boss absent

The lawsuit lost importance, however, due to the absence of former Volkswagen CEO

Martin Winterkorn

. The one who ran the German car giant from 2007 to 2015 is accused of having been aware of his company's practices in the spring of 2014 without doing anything to prevent them. But Martin Winterkorn having recently undergone surgery, justice decided last week to split the procedure, postponing his trial sine die.

The hearing which opens in Brunswick, not far from the historic headquarters of the manufacturer, will still be the second major criminal trial in Germany related to Dieselgate, and the first directly involving former Volkswagen employees.

The one targeting Rupert Stadler, former boss of Audi, a subsidiary of the group, began a year ago and is still ongoing.

This new procedure with files containing 75,000 pages will be a long-term trial that will last at least until 2023.

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