The ex-CEO is missing and witnesses reveal memory gaps: The eagerly awaited trial of the diesel affair at Volkswagen is progressing slowly. Will that change after the holidays?
After another compulsory break, the sluggish Diesel criminal case against four former Volkswagen executives is to be continued after Easter.
Further hearings of witnesses are planned for Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for the Braunschweig Regional Court on request. Recently, the fraud process, from which many promised clarification for “Dieselgate” at VW, had repeatedly come to a standstill.
Either appointments were canceled due to corona infections or scheduled witnesses invoked the right to refuse to testify, some of them are themselves accused in subsequent diesel trials. The four men who are now on trial are accused, among other things, of commercial and gang fraud with deceptive programs in the exhaust gas control of millions of diesel cars.
Winterkorn was missing as the central protagonist
From the outset, the main character, Martin Winterkorn, is missing from the perspective of many observers. At the beginning, the court had decided not to include the ex-CEO in the first complex of negotiations and to separate the part of the procedure due to a medical report. It remains unclear whether Winterkorn, who resigned over the scandal, will have to appear in the courtroom at some point.
During the first weeks of the trial, the four remaining defendants had the opportunity to admit their allegations. One of them described his view of things over several days of negotiations. Mutual recriminations by the accused and witness statements characterized by gaps in memory and contradictions stand for an interim conclusion.
When negotiations took place in small groups in the large hall of the Braunschweig Stadthalle, the question often arose of how this huge process could be streamlined. A total of more than 130 negotiation days are planned by the summer of 2023. (dpa)