Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

Does the 65 million Euros of state aid need to be repaid? Or was it free money from the government with no expectation of repayment?

It is silly to now blame companies and employees now making use of the insurance that they paid in for years. Imagine crashing your car and the insurance is refusing to pay you, arguing "but you just bought a second car! you don't really need the insurance money!". You can claim it is morally wrong, ultimately the government set the conditions for these programs.

Also one thing to keep in mind: we don't know the exact conditions of these bonuses, they might be simply legally required to pay out the bonuses.

It didn't come with a ban on bonuses, but it did come with a bunch of middle-aged white men frowning at different middle-aged white men for not pausing the bonus culture.

Here in the US we've spent several trillion dollars on Covid relief so far, and there's more to come. When you're dealing with a torrent of printed cash of this magnitude, there's of course going to be a lot of it that ends up in the wrong hands for the wrong reasons.