Ex-Audi boss Stadler convicted of fraud over diesel emissions case

The Munich district court has sentenced former Audi boss Rupert Stadler to a suspended prison term of one year and nine months, finding him guilty of fraud in a long-running diesel emissions trial on Tuesday.

His two co-defendants - former head of engine development Wolfgang Hatz and a former leading engineer identified under German privacy laws only as P - also received suspended sentences for fraud.

The sentences are not yet legally binding. All three defendants had pleaded guilty.

These are the first criminal sentences in Germany in the diesel emissions scandal uncovered in 2015, which has shaken the entire car industry and caused billions in damages.

Hatz and P had confessed to manipulating diesel engines, ensuring that they passed emission tests under controlled conditions, but then emitted more oxides of nitrogen than allowed when in normal use on the road. Stadler confessed to having stopped the sale of manipulated cars too late.

The suspended sentences are conditional on the payment of large fines. The public prosecutor had already agreed to the suspended sentences for Stadler and P as part of a plea bargain at trial, but in the case of Hatz had demanded a prison sentence without probation.

Stadler faces a fine of €1.1 million ($1.2 million), while Hatz would have to pay €400,000 and P €50,000.

Stadler admitted to failing to put a halt to the cheat software in vehicles sold in Europe after the scandal first broke in the United States in 2015. He has acknowledged failing to intervene after becoming aware of the manipulation of emissions tests.

The other two accused faced the more serious charges of being behind the manipulation on large diesel engines designed for Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche.