Hiltrud Werner, CEO of VW – "The Supervisory Board must not humiliate Stadler"

Werner also pointed out that the prosecutor has not yet laid charges against Stadler nor presented clear evidence of a possible fault on the part of the head of Audi. On Stadler should follow at the Audi summit after Handelsblatt information BMW CEO Markus Duesmann. VW has meanwhile confirmed that Duesmann should join the executive committee of VW.

The position of head of Audi had become vacant following his detention on remand last month. The Munich prosecutor accuses Stadler of having impeded the treatment of the scandal of the exhaust gases. He rejects any allegation.

Already at the beginning of Stadler's pretrial detention, it was said in group circles that his return to the position of chief at Audi was excluded. Sales Manager Bram Schot was temporarily in charge of managing the subsidiary VW

Stadler just pulled to show Werner that no lesson has been learned from the suicide of former Siemens CFO Heinz-Joachim Neubürger. The once-respected German manager has been fighting for years for his innocence in a bribe case for the Dax group. In early 2015, he finally took his own life. Until recently, Neubürger had protested his innocence.

Addressing the Financial Times, VW CEO Werner recalled that his suicide had sparked serious debate over whether the prosecutor's office had gone too far at the time.

"Where is the truth at the center of an investigation? And where does humiliation?" Werner asks. "I think of what I've observed in the discussion of the time – and unfortunately, everything has been forgotten."

Werner also criticized media treatment with Stadler. In particular, she criticized the graphics of an average boulevard that was threatening the boss of Audi and called it "The Lord of the Rings" – an allusion to the four rings of the Audi brand.