High-level Dieselgate talks recorded

The wife of an embattled executive secretly recorded crisis talks between her husband and other senior Volkswagen Group powerbrokers in the months after the Dieselgate scandal broke.

Silke Hatz recorded in-car phone calls between her husband, Porsche’s director of development Wolfgang Hatz (pictured), and other senior officials on her own smartphone then sent the recordings to Hatz’s lawyer.

Already in protective mode, Mrs Hatz allegedly broke German privacy laws by recording the calls with then-Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Müller, current Porsche Chairman Oliver Blume and Hatz’s successor as Porsche’s development director, Michael Steiner.

Hatz had previously served as the Volkswagen Group’s head of powertrain development and was jailed in Munich for nine months last year without charge before being released.

The calls occurred about two months after the Volkswagen Group admitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board that it had used engine management software to cheat the US’s strict diesel-emissions laws.

German newspaper Handelsblatt ran a transcript from the secret recordings, with Mrs Hatz including a note (in German, obviously) to her husband’s lawyers that read: “Here is a very long, but quite informative conversation on the current situation with useful formulations”.

German prosecutors found the recordings as email attachments after investigating Mrs Hatz’s mobile phone. There is conjecture under German law, though, over whether or not prosecutors can use the recordings.

While the Volkswagen Group originally insisted the scandal had been caused by a small number of rogue engineers, it quickly became clear that the scandal ran far deeper than it suggested.

The series of phone calls recorded by Mrs Hatz seemed to be to allow Mr Hatz to understand where he stood with the parent company.

"I don't want to deceive you; I can't do anything against the decision of the Volkswagen supervisory board," Müller told him in the recordings.

Hatz insisted to Müller that he had done nothing wrong and that the cheater software was "crap" from the Group.

"I'm really trying to get you out," Müller told him, but warned that if Müller’s own name emerged anywhere in the investigations "then it is difficult".

Blume’s recordings were less controversial, with the Porsche boss stating only that "There will be ‘politics’," and that those at the Wolfsburg headquarters "have no ass in their pants".

Steiner, who was Hatz’s deputy at Porsche (and later served as Porsche’s development boss before being raided himself by prosecutors over Dieselgate), was called because Müller had appointed him as the Volkswagen Group’s compliance commissioner.

Hatz called Steiner frequently, including once for more than 35 minutes, with Hatz blaming the Group and fingering Audi for trapping itself in "unfortunate condition".

Hatz resigned from the Volkswagen Group in May 2016 with a package of up to $18 million, though the payout was on the condition that he had "committed no breaches of duty".

He was released from jail by the Munich prosecutors on surety of €3 million, plus surrendering his passport and reporting twice daily to police in his hometown of Stuttgart.