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Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

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Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#81

Post by peeters »

dghughes wrote: post #58
pseudolus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deferred prosecution agreement essentially means that as long as the SEI adheres to the financial terms of the plea agreement the government will eventually drop the charges [0]. That's an amazing deal in its generosity and I'm sure that the financial penalties levied are outweighed by the financial gain realized over the years of their fraudulent activity. The rationale for not pursuing the company for the full…

Deferred prosecution is fairly new in Canada but that's what we're going through now with a company called SNC Lavalin. It's a Canadian-based world-wide engineering company famous for bribes, hookers to win contracts, possible mafia involvement. Yet the executives are escaping prosecution because the company employs so many people.

> Yet the executives are escaping prosecution because the company employs so many people.

The DPA doesn't prevent criminal proceedings against individual executives, in fact the entire point of it is to focus the punishment on those that made and oversaw the criminal decision making, rather than the company as a whole, which would unduly punish innocent employees and shareholders.

In the case of SNC-Lavalin's conduct in Libya, alongside the criminal case against the company itself, at least one VP was also criminally charged. Subsequently those charges were dropped due to delays (nothing to do with a DPA, which by the way still hasn't happened): https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-430-snc-lavalin-in-cou...

I'm not going to advocate for SNC-Lavalin, they're slimy and have been for decades, but the reason the PM pressured for a DPA was so that they didn't incur the automatic penalty of not being able to bid on government contracts, which if applied was thought to be enough to bankrupt the company or at least cause them to move out of Canada.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#82

Post by [deleted] »

_red wrote: post #32
naringas wrote: post #13

the best thing is how the "company" (or corporation) is to blame. so none of the actual individual humans who did this is at fault here. at worst they would be fired and go to work somewhere else. which is compeletely fine. and with a fine like that, this is just a "cost of doing business" for the corporation. maybe one day terribly criminal corporations should be forcefully disbanded as punishment.

This is completely inaccurate. Corporate liability protection only extends to civil financial issues, any real property crimes (ie. fraud, murder, etc) 'pierces the corporate veil' and ultimately are filed against the people who performed it.

[deleted]

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#84

Post by rayiner »

dctoedt wrote: post #76
rayiner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, this shouldn't be a "sometimes" thing, it should be a "never" thing. You get convicted for drugs, regardless of how much, and your life is forever changed. Communities have the right to declare certain things unacceptable and police their citizens accordingly. The regulation of vice and harmful substances is one of the core functions of state and local governments. In a country of 330 million people, that me…

> But the self-determination of communities is a more fundamental right than the right to consume whatever substances you want. Pretty sweeping statement there. What if a majority of a "community" decides its residents shouldn't eat meat?

I think California could ban eating and selling meat, both under its power to regulate health and the power to regulate public morality.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#85

Post by zackmorris »

As Nasa is a government agency, I wonder if lack of regulation and oversight played a hand in this.

This sort of scenario is exactly why I'm concerned about the recent trend towards rampant free market economics and libertarianism. Those ideas have merit in certain situations, but also increase risk to the public as witnessed here by losses that are proportionately much higher than any efficiency savings.

I'm also concerned about how many other agencies and companies might be affected by this sort of fraud that we haven't heard about yet. We saw the same thing happen with faulty (mostly imported) capacitors, insecure voting machines, increased healthcare costs, illness/financial hardship from GMOs and pesticides (again, mostly oversees), the list goes on.

It didn't used to be like this when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. We had different fraud then (for example monopolies and duopolies that held back telecommunications, the savings and loan scandal, industrial waste superfund sites...), but also a stronger manufacturing base in our economy. I'm just going to throw the idea out there that we're seeing a link between deregulation, fraud, increased costs on the public sector, and a slowing economy.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#86

Post by shereadsthenews »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #38
Expez wrote: post #9

Wonder if Hydro in turn will file criminal charges. They bought the business unit at fault here in 2000[1]. Surely they could hold someone accountable for fraud that way? They thought they bought a business capable of producing quality parts, but didn't end up getting that. Like the other posters in this thread I feel like the $46m fine shouldn't be the end of this. [1] https://www.hydro.com/no-NO/media/news/2019/hyd…

Only governments can file criminal charges.

As a blanket statement this is incorrect. Many common law jurisdictions permit private prosecution of criminal cases.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#87

Post by TallGuyShort »

mikeash wrote: post #22
iidop wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destruction of $700m property due to negligence certainly seems jailworthy to me. At the very least, this company should be paying a fine which actually recovers the damages.

Last time I was up for jury duty, I was asked to consider a sentence of up to 20 years in prison for the crime of receiving a stolen Xbox.

That's the kind of crowd you end up running with if you do things like trying marijuana in college.

edit: Real question, though. I'm often called to report for jury duty but have yet to actually sit on a jury. My understanding is the jury is explicitly charged to reach a "guilty of accusation" or "not guilty" decision. And sentencing is a whole separate phase of the trial in which the jury is not involved. I'm sure this varies with types of charges and with locale, but... am I missing something about how you were asked as a juror to consider that sentence?

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#88

Post by MockObject »

mikeash wrote: post #22
iidop wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destruction of $700m property due to negligence certainly seems jailworthy to me. At the very least, this company should be paying a fine which actually recovers the damages.

Last time I was up for jury duty, I was asked to consider a sentence of up to 20 years in prison for the crime of receiving a stolen Xbox.

Was that under a three strikes law?

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#89

Post by ethagknight »

JohnGB wrote: post #83

Why wouldn't the QC at NASA include testing at independent labs for anything mission critical? That seems like a failure on NASA's part as much as it is fraud by the supplier.

This is what I am wondering. In construction, we have third party testing of every major material in use, like daily concrete testing for new pours, weld inspections on steel, graded lumber, etc. hard to believe that NASA didn’t test their aluminum for a decade.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#90

Post by imtringued »

anentropic wrote: post #73

Lucky it was only a $700million satellite in another application people could have died

If you value human time by $1 million per year then that is a waste of 700 man years or 8 people's worth. Of course they got paid and received "free" training for their job so it wasn't a complete waste but there certainly are better things to use those man years on, like a functioning satellite.
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