Former Volkswagen works council leader Klaus Volkert and former personnel manager Klaus-Joachim Gebauer were today (22 February) convicted in a German court over their roles in the corruption scandal at Volkswagen.
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Volkert was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, while Gebauer received a one-year suspended sentence.
This was the third trial related to the scandal, and Volkert’s sentence was the heftiest handed down.
Bloomberg News quoted the presiding judge at the regional court in Brunswick as saying: “Volkert knew that he only got these payments because he was a member of the works council. He also knew that the payments were channeled to him outside of the regular ways at Volkswagen.”
Last year, VW’s head of human resources Peter Hartz was given a two-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay a fine of EUR2.6m for making payments to Volkert. Hartz avoided a tougher sentence in exchange for full admission and disclosure of all information pertaining to the issue.
The Volkert and Gebauer case saw former VW CEO and current supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piech give testimony. He said that he was unaware of the network of corruption that had prevailed.
