Four ex-VW directors convicted over Dieselgate fraud

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Four former Volkswagen managers have been found guilty of fraud in connection with Dieselgate, 10 years following the discovery of an emissions cheating scandal that has since cost the company more than €32bn.

A German regional court on Monday sentenced VW’s former head of diesel engine development, Jens Hadler, to four and a half years in prison, while the company’s former head of drive technology, Hanno Jelden, received two years and seven months, according to a court spokesperson.

Two further suspended sentences were handed out, including to Heinz-Jakob Neusser, a former VW board member and the most senior of the defendants, who received one year and three months. The fourth conviction was handed out to a defendant only identified as Thorsten D.

Jelden’s lawyer, Philipp Gehrmann, on Monday said he would appeal against the verdict, which he called “wrong” and “way overboard”, adding that his client had co-operated with the investigation. Legal representatives for the three other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Although the verdict by the Braunschweig court brings to a close a near four-year trial, its conclusion is far from the end in prosecutors’ attempts to uncover how widely the emission fraud was known within the company.

The court spokesperson said four further criminal proceedings against a total of 31 defendants were still pending.

Volkswagen is also facing a separate civil case, where investors are seeking damages on the grounds that the company failed to inform markets in time about the use of illegal emissions software.

For the criminal trial, the prosecution assembled more than 75,000 pages of evidence to establish who within the company’s leadership knew about — or helped orchestrate — its widespread emissions cheating.

While several senior executives, including supervisory board chair Hans Dieter Pötsch, have avoided trial after VW in 2020 paid €9mn to settle market manipulation charges, former chief executive Martin Winterkorn has remained under criminal prosecution.

Winterkorn, who has denied the charges, was originally part of the trial that concluded on Monday, but his case was separated after his defence claimed that health issues prevented him from appearing in court.

Proceedings against the former VW boss were last year set to resume, but in January the Braunschweig court cancelled all upcoming hearings, citing expert advice that Winterkorn would be unfit to stand trial “at least in the coming months”.

Very few VW employees have been convicted of fraud over the diesel emissions scandal, in which the company installed software in millions of vehicles to make them appear far more environmentally friendly than they actually were.

The only senior VW director to have served prison time for their involvement in the scandal is Oliver Schmidt, the company’s former head of environmental and engineering matters in Michigan. In 2017, Schmidt was sentenced to seven years in prison by a court in Detroit, after he was arrested while on holiday in the US.

In 2023, former Audi boss Rupert Stadler pleaded guilty to fraud by omission in a Munich court but avoided prison, receiving a suspended sentence instead.

VW on Monday said it had not been involved in the “criminal proceedings” concluded on Monday, and said it did not expect the verdict to have “significant consequences” for the ongoing civil case.