Former Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler admitted his involvement in the diesel emissions scandal in court on Tuesday, in exchange for a suspended sentence.
Stadler agreed to a deal put forth earlier this month by the district court in Munich for a suspended sentence and a €1.1 million ($1.21 million) fine.
If Stadler chose to not admit his role, he was looking at a one to two-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
What is the scandal?
The scandal dates back to 2015, when the US Environmental Protection Agency found the German automaker selling vehicles with a defeat device to cheat emissions between 2014 and 2015.
The scandal has since cost Volkswagen billions of dollars in settlements and forced it to recall millions of vehicles.
The European Commission in a statement in 2021 said Volkswagen had sold 8.5 million vehicles in the European Union that had been fitted with a device to rig tests.
Volkswagen had marketed its diesel vehicles as clean when they were in fact massive polluters. The European Court of Justice ruled Volkswagen's actions as illegal in December 2020.