IANS | 14 Aug, 2018
A Munich Court on Monday rejected a request by Audi CEO Rupert Stadler
to be released from police custody after being imprisoned eight weeks
ago in the course of ongoing "dieselgate" investigations in Germany.
A
spokesperson for the court was quoted by Xinhua as saying that Stadler
remained under urgent suspicion of having known of diesel
emissions-cheating practices at Audi without halting the sale of
affected vehicles.
Additionally, the arrest warrant delivered to
the CEO was not overturned because of a danger of collusion still posed
by the 55-year-old suspect.
Stadler had filed a legal complaint
in the hope of being set free as he is awaiting the formal opening of a
court trial to probe Audi's involvement in the "dieselgate" scandal.
Stadler
and another unnamed senior manager at the Volkswagen Group subsidiary
Audi are suspected of offenses of criminal fraud and "indirect false
certification" in the marketing of diesel vehicles which were fitted
with defeat devices to understate their actual Nitrogen Oxide (NOx)
emissions.
German investigators believe that the Ingolstadt-based
luxury carmaker has sold at least 210,000 diesel vehicles with illegal
emissions-cheating software in the United States and Europe since 2009.
The
suspended CEO has already provided a first testimony to prosecutors
while imprisoned at the Augsburg-Gablingen penitentiary facility near
Munich. It remains unclear, however, whether or not he denied the
accusations against him.
Stadler has been temporarily replaced in
his role on the Audi management board by Bram Schot. Volkswagen has
hesitated to fire Stadler prior to a conclusion of judicial proceedings
against him and has only suspended the jailed CEO whose regular contract
is scheduled to expire in 2022.
The arrest marked the first time
that a member of the management board of a German carmaker was taken
into police custody in the "dieselgate" scandal.
