Former VW Boss Winterkorn's Market Manipulation Trial Dropped

Former Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn's trial for market manipulation in relation to the company's emissions-cheating scandal has been dropped, a German court said Friday, though he still faces fraud charges

Frankfurt am Main, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Former Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn's trial for market manipulation in relation to the company's emissions-cheating scandal has been dropped, a German court said Friday, though he still faces fraud charges.

The court in Brunswick, near VW's headquarters in Wolfsburg, said it "provisionally discontinued" the market manipulation case because the "expected punishment is not of considerable weight" compared to the fraud case.

Winterkorn was accused of having intentionally failed to inform financial markets in time of the risk of a fine due to emissions-cheating vehicles on the US market.

Volkswagen later admitted having rigged 11 million vehicles worldwide.

The so-called defeat devices illegally installed in the cars made them appear to pollute less in lab tests than they did on the road.

The car maker has already paid out more than 30 billion Euros ($36 billion) in fines, legal costs and compensation to car owners -- mainly in the United States.

Winterkorn's potential punishment in the fraud case "is significantly higher than in the proceedings for market manipulation", the court said.

The group's current chief executive Herbert Diess and supervisory board chair Hans Dieter Poetsch had faced similar market manipulation accusations of failing to inform shareholders in a timely manner of the pollution scam.

Those proceedings were dropped after VW agreed to a settlement that cost it nine million euros.

No senior executive has been convicted in Germany so far in connection with the scandal that erupted in September 2015.

However, the first trial of a VW leader linked to dieselgate opened in Munich in September 2020.

Rupert Stadler, former CEO of VW subsidiary Audi, along with other executives and engineers, are on trial over fraud charges, with hearing scheduled until December 2022.