Nine years after the carmaker admitted to concealing emissions on a massive scale, Martin Winterkorn will be tried in a German court.

Almost nine years after Volkswagen admitted that it had rigged millions of cars to cheat on emissions tests, the company’s former chief executive went on trial Tuesday on charges stemming from the fraud, a vast corporate conspiracy that changed the auto industry.

Martin Winterkorn, 77, who led Volkswagen from 2007 until he resigned under pressure in September 2015, appeared at a court in Braunschweig, Germany, after a judge rejected his pleas to postpone the trial because he said he was in poor health. The trial will be a test of whether German authorities can hold top executives accountable for wrongdoing that cost Volkswagen tens of billions of dollars and contributed to poor air quality in Europe and the United States.

Mr. Winterkorn, who was once Germany’s highest-paid executive, faces criminal charges

Keep reading this article on The New York Times Business.