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German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
31–40 of 348 posts
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#32Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…
>Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. In this case not only were the managers personally held liable, the company itself also had to pay vast amounts of compensation to customers. Not only in Germany or the EU, but also to US customers.
> not only were the managers personally held liable
Yes but not all of them. The top one is still evading justice.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#33Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…
Well, as everyone knows, accountability really stifles innovation. All my libertarian friends tell me that it’d be better to privatize it rather than trying to legislate morality.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#34What about major shareholders? Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply pleased when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.
And?
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#35The OP does not mention the name of one VW exec (Oliver Schmidt, the head of VW's environmental and engineering office in Michigan, a German citizen) convicted in US Federal Court in 2017 for his part in the scandal. He was released after serving about 3.5 years in prison. A second exec sentenced in the US (also in 2017) was James Liang, also a German citizen, who prosecutors say "was a pivotal figure in designing th…
Deutsche Welle has a bit more detail and also discusses the CEO:
https://www.dw.com/en/4-ex-vw-managers-guilty-of-fraud-over-...
Apparently he has some health issues which caused the case against him to be suspended. That might resume later but unclear right now. He's 78 at this point.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#36[flagged]
What did Zuckerberg do? Maybe he did do something, but hearing "Boo Fuckerberg!" over and over again doesn't imply he's guilty of anything. It's similar to hearing "it's the Jooos" a bajillion effing times and then believing it without asking for any substance.
Have a look at my favorite submissions and search for Facebook.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, it's just that rich people are mostly above the law most of the time
When it comes to criminal offences, they are pretty much within the law, well except they can afford better lawyers so usually get away with minimum legally possible punishment. Companies and the concept of limited liability exists to make innovation possible. No one will start a startup knowing they will have their house confiscated and go to prison if it fails. And, because majority of money businessmen make is the…
We need to balance the benefit and the downside of the limited liability in corporations. If innovation no longer becomes beneficial for the society and only beneficial for a small number of people, perhaps the society may need to reconsider the concept.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#38The last time I read any updates on this, everyone on both sides of the legal process were trying to single out scapegoat individual software engineers and rake them over the coals. Did something change?
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#39Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…
Because with large companies, blame and accountability gets spread thin over a wide area till it evaporates, so everyone gets away with it.
Ultimately the CEO is responsible. To me it doesn't even matter if the CEO knows about it or not, if not the company has poor governance which is the CEOs full responsibility.
Wirecard CEO has been arrested since 2020, will probably sit for another 10 years.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#40Can we so CrowdStrike next?