Audi boss arrested in diesel probe

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Audi chief executive Rupert Stadler was arrested Monday in connection with parent company Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” emissions cheating scandal, with prosecutors saying they feared he might try to destroy evidence.

The dramatic development comes a week after Munich prosecutors raided Stadler’s home, accusing him of fraud and the falsification of documents that allowed diesel vehicles equipped with cheating software to be sold to European customers. Prosecutors in the Bavarian state said the arrest was justified because of the “risk of concealment of evidence”. Audi confirmed the arrest to AFP, declining to give further details. “For Mr Stadler, the presumption of innocence continues to apply,” a spokesman said in a statement.

Stadler is the most senior executive yet to be detained in the dieselgate crisis, which started when the Volkswagen group admitted in 2015 to installing so-called “defeat devices” in some 11 million diesels worldwide that made them seem less polluting in lab tests than they actually were on the road.

The affected vehicles involved VW’s own-brand cars, but also those made by Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat. VW’s luxury subsidiary Audi has long faced suspicions that its engineers helped create the software used in the scam. Audi‘s former head of engine development, Wolfgang Hatz, was taken into custody in Germany in September 2017 and remains behind bars. A manager at VW subsidiary Porsche was also detained in April. He was identified by German media as Joerg Kerner, an engineer in charge of Porsche’s engine division who was working at Audi when the diesel scandal broke.