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The first criminal trial in the diesel scandal lasted more than two and a half years, and now we are waiting for the verdict. The frame is already set. In the pleas of the defense, however, the prosecutor’s office got hold of the riot law.

The lawyers for former Audi boss Rupert Stadler and the two co-defendants in the diesel fraud trial called for suspended sentences in their closing plea on Tuesday. The Munich Regional Court has already promised all three known defendants.

The verdict will be handed down next Tuesday. The defense lawyers also took the opportunity to clearly criticize the public prosecutor’s office. She used the “flamthrower” from the start and did not complete the investigation until charges were filed, said Gerson Trüg, attorney for the former head of Audi engine development Wolfgang Hatz.

It had to be done quickly – perhaps also in the race with the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office for the first diesel test in Germany. This is also why the trial lasted more than two and a half years and the difference between the allegations and the “thin” evidence is stark, Trüg said.

Serious allegations against the public prosecutor

Stadler’s attorney Thilo Pfordte accused the prosecutor of populism and a conflicting assessment of witnesses and the amount of damages. The lawyers of the suspected engineer P. accused the public prosecutor of having taken over questionable research results from American lawyers during the investigation. The US had exploited the diesel scandal to benefit its auto industry.

Stadler and Hatz had no last word, P. apologized again. The Economic Criminal Court has awarded all three suspended sentences of one and a half to two years. In addition, Stadler must pay 1.1 million euros, Hatz 400,000 euros and the engineer 50,000 euros.

In the course of an agreement with the court and the defense, the prosecutor’s office has agreed with Stadler and P. For Hatz, however, she is demanding a prison sentence of three years and two months without parole.

All defense attorneys cited the pre-trial detention, the length of the trial and the huge cost, and argued for suspended sentences at the lower end of the range specified by the court. The legal costs alone would amount to more than a million euros, plus lawyers’ fees for several thousand hours, P’s lawyer Walter Lechner calculated. His client is now in danger of going bankrupt.

Late confession

Stadler had maintained his innocence for years. However, after the court pointed out that he risked a prison sentence, he admitted in May that he had not stopped selling cars with manipulated emission values ​​in Europe for too long. He should have been more careful, investigated and intervened. According to the court, he confessed to “fraud by negligence”.

Hatz, P. and another engineer confessed to initiating the engine software design. With illegal defeat devices, diesel cars complied with nitrogen oxide limits on the test bench, but not on the road. The car manufacturers wanted to save themselves the time-consuming retrofitting of larger AdBlue tanks for exhaust gas cleaning, after they had previously made a wrong calculation. (sda/awp/dpa)