Damages, legal costs and monetary conditions: Stadler is being made claims in the millions, but they should hardly be a burden. What is the background to this.
Klaus Koester
05/26/2023 – 5:25 p.m
Observers had been waiting for these words for a long time: “I have to admit the allegations overall,” explained Ulrike Thole-Groll, the lawyer for ex-Audi boss Rupert Stadler, in mid-May before the district court of Munich. For the first time, a defendant in the position of an ex-CEO has confessed to having done wrong in the diesel scandal. “I didn’t know, but I recognized it as possible and accepted that the quality of diesel engines might not meet the legal approval requirements,” Stadler explained in a cryptic manner. During his time as Audi boss, he is said not to have prevented hundreds of thousands of diesel vehicles from being sold with fraudulent software. In addition, he had to state – another cryptic formulation – that he had failed to ensure that buyers of the vehicles were informed of a malfunction that might have been built into them.