[HN Gopher] German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgat...
___________________________________________________________________
German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
Author : Tomte
Score : 609 points
Date : 2025-05-26 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I see this as an absolute win. Personal liability is the way to
| keep corporations accountable.
|
| As long as breaking the law only results with a fine the company
| has to pay, then the issue is an accounting problem for the
| executives, but the moment they risk going to jail, then it
| becomes a legal problem for them so they actually address it.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate
| behaviour punished like this. Steal PS10k 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 government to bring any individuals
| to account for wide scale corruption and profiteering during
| COVID.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Because with large companies, blame and accountability gets
| spread thin over a wide area till it evaporates, so everyone
| gets away with it.
| fanwood wrote:
| Not really, it's just that rich people are mostly above the
| law most of the time
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Rich people are above the law precisely because they use
| corporations and corporate laws as shields to deflect
| personal liability of their actions as a actions of "the
| company" which is a faceless entity.
|
| _" You see, I didn't steal your money, the company I ran
| stole your money, but that's actually on you because you
| didn't read the fine print I put in the contract you
| signed. And don't worry, justice was served, the company
| got punished and is now insolvent. Now watch this drive
| *swings golf club*"_
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's worse than that. Rich-people crimes are often
| codified as much less severe than regular-people crimes,
| or are just outright legal.
|
| This is a great example. Why is this emissions fakery
| illegal? Ultimately it's because pollution kills people.
| Are these people going to prison for killing people? Not
| exactly. They're going to prison for killing _too many_
| people. If they had stayed within the limits, they'd
| still be killing people, just not as many, and it would
| be 100% legal.
|
| Stab a person in the lungs, go to jail. Kill people by
| putting toxins into their lungs, well, just stay under
| this limit.
|
| Walk out the door with a $10 item you didn't pay for,
| crime. Fail to pay your worker $1,000 that they earned,
| that's a civil matter. Worst case you'll have to pay a
| penalty.
| lkbm wrote:
| > Why is this emissions fakery illegal? Ultimately it's
| because pollution kills people. Are these people going to
| prison for killing people? Not exactly. They're going to
| prison for killing too many people. If they had stayed
| within the limits, they'd still be killing people, just
| not as many, and it would be 100% legal.
|
| Polluting is not a "rich person" crime. It's very much
| something normal/poor people do a lot, too. It's common
| for individuals to burn leaves. It's less common, but
| also an active problem, for them to burn piles of trash
| (including plastic, tires, etc.)
|
| As an individual, I'm allowed to do a certain amount of
| pollution (some because it's legal, some because it's
| unenforced), and will get fined if I do too much, same as
| the corporation.
| wat10000 wrote:
| As an individual, at least you can make the argument that
| your activities result in far less than one death. What's
| the appropriate punishment for one micromort? I don't
| know the answer to that but it's probably not too much.
|
| Large polluters don't have that excuse. I recall that
| diesel hate alone resulted in dozens or hundreds of
| excess deaths. How many people do compliant cars kill?
| How many does a coal power plant kill? And all 100%
| legal.
| lb1lf wrote:
| "Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor
| souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."
|
| Edward, Lord Thurlow c.1850
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I didn't steal your money, the company I ran stole your
| money
|
| This isn't how it works.
| const_cast wrote:
| This is exactly how it works. Liability spread out over
| even just 10 people is _so_ much less risky than one
| person.
|
| A corporation can do pretty much anything. Steal, lie,
| poison communities, give people HIV. Anything.
| anovikov wrote:
| 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 stock worth, company being
| insolvent and thus it's stock losing all value is in itself
| a punishment heavy enough for the founders.
| nemonemo wrote:
| 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.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > No one will start a startup knowing they will have
| their house confiscated and go to prison if it fails.
|
| What does that have to do with anything? We're not
| discussing a case of VW making bad business decisions and
| losing money.
|
| If you start a company and break the law and harm people,
| you should have your house confiscated and/or go to
| prison. If you can't take this responsibility, just don't
| start the startup, that's perfect.
|
| You are creating confusion about the subject being
| discussed in order to defend criminals.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes that was a bad example. The "limited liability"
| concept applies to financial losses, not crimes.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Why would you go to jail unless you're doing something
| illegal? Are you honestly saying startups should be
| legally exempt from pollution laws and allowed to cheat
| brazenly on commissions tests by public agencies? It's
| fair for rich people to just lose some income(and still
| be rich) for crimes while poor people have to go to jail
| is honestly a unhinged take
| constantcrying wrote:
| In this case both the company and the responsible managers
| were held liable. Of course a lot of blame shifting was
| attempted, but clearly it did not result in no one being held
| responsible.
| aeyes wrote:
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I believe "knew or should have known" is the legal
| statement. Ignorance (either deliberate or accidental)
| doesn't get you off the hook.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| Rhodesia solution is magnificient in this case.
|
| Sending A Letter To The PM | Yes Minister | BBC Comedy
| Greats
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE6lpKkcFQY
| brookst wrote:
| But negligence is fundamentally different from mens rea.
| Fine to punish both but I am not a fan of justice
| intentionally ignoring context.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But negligence is fundamentally different from mens rea
|
| It differs in that _mens rea_ is the legal concept of a
| culpable state of mind, and negligence is one example.
| More fully, a crime is generally defined by a prohibited
| act (actua reus) and a wrongful state of mind (mens rea),
| though there are strict liability crimes with no mens rea
| required.
|
| For, say, murder (in common law, specific statutory
| schemes may diverge from this somewhat), the actus reus
| is homicide, and the mens rea is "malice aforethought".
|
| While "malice aforethought" is _sui generis_ and seen
| only in murder, the common kinds of _mens rea_ used in
| defining crimes, in descending order of the severity with
| which they are usually treated, are intent, recklessness,
| and negligence. (The same mental states are relevant in
| tort liability, though strict liability in tort is more
| common, and the civil and criminal definitions of
| negligence, particularly, are somewhat different.)
| autobodie wrote:
| That is extremely wreckless. The board is unquestionably
| the most responsible party.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Wirecard CEO was proven beyond reasonable doubt that he
| personally was involved in large-scale fraud.
| bluGill wrote:
| The question is should the CEO have know. A CEO that trys
| to set a culture of doing the right thing, with training on
| what the right thing is, and other such things can still be
| deceived by someone low level who cheats. It is possible
| for one person to cover their tracks for a long time if
| they are trying to cheat. It can be years to track down who
| is doing the immoral thing even after you catch something
| is wrong.
|
| The question this is this one person (or small group)
| operating against their instructions, or is it the CEO
| encouraging people to cheat? That can be a hard question,
| but we want CEOs to think if I do "enough" (whatever that
| is) to ensure we obey the law I'm okay and thus I want to
| ensure enough is done. There are always crooks in the
| world, we want to ensure they are not encourged. If the CEO
| is always at fault their thought is likely to go to how can
| I ensure that tracks are covered so they nobody can be
| convicted.
| jajko wrote:
| Those golden parachutes and lavish lifestyle comes with a
| cost. That cost is responsibility and risks it brings.
|
| Whether he knew or nit is a matter for courst, but in any
| case he is responsible too. Punish crooks harsh and
| visibly, reward honesty and good engineering massively
| and also visibly and company as a whole will act
| accordingly. We dont talk about a single guy hacking some
| firmware build, but a well known company culture.
| rurban wrote:
| Which CEO? Of the 4 big German manufacturers, which
| conspired do implement these special cheats, or Bosch which
| implemented this cheat, and supported it as such?
|
| Or the politicians who wrote into law to able to use such a
| cheating device?
|
| That would be 5 CEO's plus at least 2 german politicians,
| plus 20 more politicians in all other countries which
| selected this cheating EU standard.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Wanting to use velocity profiles to set exhaust treatment
| parameters during warm up of the engine is totally
| reasonable.
|
| Bosh's software is tunable to silly extents to avoid
| expensive vehicle testing as testing is tied to binaries
| due to bad processes.
|
| You can more or less make a different program by changing
| 'parameters'.
|
| I really think it might be unfortunate if this would
| extend into a crusade versus general computing.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Someone floated on here that the punishment should be partial
| government ownership stakes instead of weak fines. It doesn't
| syphon off funds and risk damaging important national
| companies that are 'too big to punish'. Instead it dilutes
| shareholder value and DIRECTLY impacts the company owners. It
| also gives the government an inside place in the company
| which no company wants to deal with. If a company doesn't
| change ultimately the owners lose ownership.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Proof that solutions exist, if we want them. Whatever the
| cause of the apparent impunity of large corporations and
| rich people, it is not a lack of workable solutions. See
| also fines proportional to income, which now exist in
| multiple countries.
| 7952 wrote:
| I wonder if you could require the company to licence all
| its IP for free within the country. So that the brand and
| designs could still exist.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| VW already is owned by the German state of NRW (20% of the
| voting rights, 11.8% of the equity)
| junga wrote:
| Not exactly. Volkswagen headquarters are located in
| Wolfsburg which belongs to the German state of Lower
| Saxony (Niedersachsen). NRW, or officially abbreviated
| NW, is the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-
| Westfalen).
|
| Therefore it's Lower Saxony that owns some parts of
| Volkswagen.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That sounds like a terrible idea because it would
| progressively "bribe" the government to be in their
| interest to take the company's side as they gain more and
| more of it. Combine it that conflicts of interest with the
| appearance of improprirety and another conflict of interest
| of making expropriation of the successful a temptation.
|
| The latter could be even more disasterous long term. Nobody
| wants to go out to dinner with cannibals or show up at the
| stores for fear of being eaten. Likewise being known as an
| expropriating country, you may as well go ahead and embargo
| yourself.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Not just companies, nonprofits, religions, governments
| constantcrying wrote:
| >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.
| hulitu wrote:
| > not only were the managers personally held liable
|
| Yes but not all of them. The top one is still evading
| justice.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Good luck proving where the decision was made. Volkswagen's
| CEO is unlikely to have been asked whether to be 'creative'
| about testing setups.
| Aeolun wrote:
| He's not evading justice if he was never involved. That's
| the whole point of having a 4 year trial, so you can figure
| out who was actually guilty.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| They jailed 1 banker lol
| MrDresden wrote:
| > _They jailed 1 banker lol_
|
| You've been incorrectly informed.
|
| As reported back in 2018[0], 36 individuals had already
| received a cumulative jail sentence of 96 years, with still
| more cases ongoing when this report was written.
|
| [0]: https://www.visir.is/g/20181632401d/36-manns-i-
| samtals-96-ar...
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. I incorrectly recalled from that
| documentary "Inside Job"
| izacus wrote:
| The question is, whether VW as a German company is now going to
| end up being beaten by US competitors which could do even more
| nasty stuff unpunished.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Germany is free to prove that these companies are cheating as
| well.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| We should let our executives commit crimes lest they be
| outcompeted by other executives committing worse crimes is a
| terrible argument. It's more a argument for not letting the
| other company compete as easily in your country
| dguest wrote:
| Not to mention that it assumes assumes lying, cheating, and
| corruption is just the price you pay for quality products.
|
| Seriously, if people are framing this in terms of "what's
| good for industry" vs "what is the right thing to do", the
| crooks have already won and your national industry has
| already lost.
| izacus wrote:
| If our companies get destroyed, people fired and US/Chinese
| crooks win while EU spirals into recession, moral high
| ground is going to be a poor comfort.
| lucianbr wrote:
| It has been some years since VW had to give up cheating on
| emission tests. Were they beaten by US competitors during
| this time? I have not read any news about it.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| They have kind of abandoned diesel engines, which the whole
| scandal was based around. It became clear that it would be
| impossible to create diesel engines which would comply with
| enviromental standards, which is a shame since they are
| more efficient and it is consumers who are losing out. They
| are still one of the main automotive conglomerations today.
| If anything American car companies are losing the market in
| Europe, Ford for example have abandoned their best selling
| model - the Focus, and in the UK at least they are the only
| US brand besides for Tesla.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I could be wrong but I think BMW and Mercedes still make
| diesel engines. So maybe it's only impossible at a lower
| price point? Although the difference isn't that large.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Even VW never stopped selling diesel cars, but they are
| certainly being phased out everywhere and it's not as
| popular as it once was.
| lhoff wrote:
| VW still builds and sells Diesel engines in its Cars. For
| Volkswagen and Skoda the share of diesel cars was about
| 30% in Germany. Source (only in German and behind
| paywall, sorry) https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/s
| tudie/468422/umfrag...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Using [1], BMW have 87 models, of which 13 can be
| electric, 13 plug-in hybrid, 47 petrol and just 6 diesel.
| The six are all SUVs.
|
| Mercedes don't have an easy filter, but they do have some
| cars available with diesel engines, e.g. C-Class.
|
| Diesel is now down to 9.5% of new cars sold in Europe (Q1
| 2025), less than full EVs ([2]).
|
| [1] https://www.bmw.co.uk/en/all-models.html
|
| [2] https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-
| registrations...
| lucianbr wrote:
| There are several 3 series diesel variants sold right now
| in my country, so maybe we need a bit more data gathering
| before drawing conclusions.
|
| It does seem like diesel is trending lower, but it's not
| gone yet, regardless whether you think that is a good
| thing or not.
|
| In any case, my point was this:
|
| > it would be impossible to create diesel engines which
| would comply with enviromental standards
|
| is false. Which it is.
|
| Or multiple car manufacturers are still cheating, I guess
| we must consider the possibility.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They do make them, but they don't sell them in the USA
| any more. Nobody does.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The funny thing is their emissions weren't that bad,
| several other European manufacturers were worse.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| In all fairness, in the general European perception, with
| the Cougar, the Puma, and the Focus, Ford is not really
| seen as an "American" brand. Especially the Focus has
| virtually nothing to do with what Europeans would
| consider 'an American car'. It is the quintessential low-
| to-mid-tier Eurocar: small, cheap, does what it is
| supposed to do.
|
| Compare that to e.g. Chevrolet, which tried - and failed
| - to get a foothold in Europe. The failure was mostly
| them not understanding the local market.
| darkwater wrote:
| Didn't Chevrolet just bought and rebranded some Korean
| automaker?
| pqtyw wrote:
| AFAIK they were selling rebadged Daewoo models which were
| built on platforms developed by Opel. I suppose they
| wanted a budget brand and manufacturing and importing
| from Korea was cheaper back in those days than just using
| Opel's factories..
| pqtyw wrote:
| > e.g. Chevrolet
|
| Also it overlapped a lot with Opel which a much more
| successful brand in Europe. Basically it was an off-
| brand/cheap Opel, which wasn't exactly doing that great
| itself...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Ford sold the Focus in the USA also, I had one and loved
| it. It was one of their few "world" cars.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Consumers still have to breathe though. I'd be totally
| fine if diesel engines were completely phased out. In the
| US we somehow can't even get rid of those idiots that
| retune their engines for "rolling coal".
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| Because, for the most part, we aren't doing damned thing
| about it. "Rolling coal" is inherently a very public act
| of law breaking, but I doubt a single person has ever
| been pulled over by any American cop for it. The EPA and
| certain states were trying through other enforcement
| mechanisms to fight it, but with Trump in office, it's
| basically encouraged to "delete" your Diesel emissions
| equipment if you aren't in commercial operation.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| ...said deletion, which returns your truck to the state
| of the regulatory art circa 2009, also results in a
| doubling of fuel economy and about an 80% jump in
| horsepower.
| Interesco wrote:
| These percentages seem a bit high compared to what I have
| seen. I usually see/hear about a 1-3mpg and 10-30% HP. I
| understand the point you are trying to make but "doubling
| of fuel economy and about an 80% jump in horsepower" is
| far from accurate, especially considering the downsides
| of a delete on every outside of the vehicle
| paganel wrote:
| You can't wage modern war without diesel engines, those
| trucks won't drive themselves close to the front-lines
| (and, no, electric-powered trucks in times of war are a
| terrible idea, and the ones powered by gasoline are a lot
| less efficient and don't provide the same torque
| numbers).
| joker99 wrote:
| Valid points you're making. Let me make a counter point:
| as a German, I've seen tanks on 5/6 occasions in my life,
| never using their own engines. But at the same time, I've
| seen hundreds of cars every day and breathed their
| emissions. It's totally fine if tanks continue using
| diesel, but cars, trucks etc. not using diesel (or gas)
| engines anymore will have a measurable effect on my
| health
| lukan wrote:
| I actually would also prefer modern stealth tanks battery
| or hydrogen/fuel cell powered.
|
| Otherwise good point.
| paganel wrote:
| But then you'd also lose the capability of making diesel
| engines for good, and, again, they're not used only for
| tanks when it comes to warfare.
|
| Just look at the hole the US has dug for itself when it
| stopped producing civilian sea-ships, nowadays the cost
| of producing or even repairing its war-oriented sea-ships
| is way too high. And not only that, but it doesn't have
| the people with the knowhow to build those ships anymore,
| no matter the money thrown at the problem.
| Gud wrote:
| Why would electric trucks be a terrible idea in war time?
| nradov wrote:
| The US military is starting to use some hybrid vehicles
| to improve fuel logistics and reduce operating noise. But
| pure electric ground vehicles are obviously a stupid idea
| for combat usage due to charging issues.
| amalcon wrote:
| Short version is that you can't rely on the power grid or
| other centralized generation. Centralized infrastructure
| may not even be available, but if it is then the enemy
| can target it.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Everything you purchase over the course of a day was
| transported by a diesel truck at some point.
| mikestew wrote:
| It wasn't transported with the neighbor's truck down the
| street that has a "defeat device".
| nickff wrote:
| Parent was talking about commercial diesel trucks which
| do not comply with the same regulations as passenger
| vehicles, and the article talks about stock non-
| compliance. Why are you changing the subject?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Which likely was very polluting, because thanks to
| bitching by the trucking industry, they get a pass on
| emissions via "gliders."
|
| They can buy a brand new truck sans engine and drop some
| terribly polluting piece of crap from several decades ago
| and bypass all modern emissions regulations.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| EV's and Hybrids get better mileage and pollute less.
|
| It's funny how the Clinton admin forced a golden egg into
| GM's hands (the EV1) and GM tossed it away in disgust
| when Bush was elected.
| rurban wrote:
| VW? Everyone who used the Bosch ECU cheated. VW was just
| the biggest who got caught and had to go to jail therefore.
| All the others, which were more guilty than the VW execs
| are still free.
|
| And the politicians which sanctioned these special diesel
| tests were not even named. Nor all the other countries who
| also choose the European Standard (not testing diesel
| engines) over the US Standard.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Not just Bosch ECUs, not just European car companies, and
| this shit has been going on for decades. _All_ the car
| companies do it and have since at least the 90 's. The
| proof is in the ROM dumps of all the various cars - the
| tuners can point to two sets of tables of fuel
| mixture/timing maps, one for when the ECU thinks it's
| being emissions tested and one for regular use.
|
| As early as the late 90's tuners offered features where
| doing something with the cruise control buttonss which
| would switch the engine computer back to stock
| programming to pass emissions, run on cheaper gas, or
| fool the dealer if it went in for service. How does
| everyone think they were able to do stuff like that
| without any hardware mods?
|
| Oh, and all the car companies were self-reporting their
| CO2 emissions in the EU for decades. When EU regulators
| actually got around to testing cars, shockigly, the
| companies were lying.
|
| It's basically accepted at this point that Telsa lies
| about their range and efficiency numbers, and recently
| there's evidence they have been fucking with people's
| odometers for the purpose of getting them out of warranty
| quicker.
|
| Ferrari have all sorts of terms and prohibitions on
| things journalists can't do with their cars - one being
| track lap time testing. Why? Because they got caught by
| Top Gear specially modifying their cars for the Top Gear
| test circuit, as well as using tires that aren't on the
| production vehicles - and when Top Gear called them out,
| Ferrari permanently banned them *and have gone so far as
| to prohibit Ferrari owners from allowing Top Gear staff
| access to the owner's vehicles for testing, under threat
| of being blacklisted. Now that they've been caught
| cheating, they simply won't allow anyone to test their
| cars versus anyone else's.
|
| The wheel keeps on turning.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| Indeed, Dieselgate is 10 years ago. If they would've
| suffered badly from it, we would've seen that by now. Sure,
| they've had to pay fines and compensations, but that seems
| to have been dealt with. In fact, you could argue the
| opposite: Dieselgate forced VW to drop diesel and switch
| focus to EVs [1, 2], earlier than they would've done
| otherwise, giving them an advantage over other European and
| American competitors (except Tesla). Of course, there are
| plenty of other issues they've faced since them (inflation,
| Chinese competition, tariffs, etc).
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgkell/2022/12/05/from-
| emiss...
|
| [2] https://www.ft.com/content/a2c7ca01-461c-4dc2-8006-ec1d
| 6b61a...
| codethief wrote:
| > Of course, there are plenty of other issues they've
| faced since them (inflation, Chinese competition,
| tariffs, etc).
|
| Yeah, they're actually not doing well at all right now.
| izacus wrote:
| Yes, VW has since then had mass layoffs and closed plants:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/volksw...
| wil421 wrote:
| Diesel engines in the US have stricter regulations. I doubt
| folks in the EU will start buying PowerStrokes, Cummins, or
| Duramaxes anytime soon.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| How so? There is no way any of those engines would pass
| emissions in the EU. How are US regulations even stricter?
| pkaye wrote:
| Back in 2015 US EPA NOx emission limits were tighter than
| EU regulations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scanda
| l#U...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I feel this also has a lot to do with the use of diesel.
| The number of passenger vehicles and light duty pickups
| in the US that actually use diesel is a fraction of what
| it was in Europe.
|
| The emission limits being for ULEV vehicles, I don't
| think I have seen a ULEV truck - indeed California
| classifies most under the LEV banner.
|
| None of this is to change the point around nitrous oxide
| emissions - the environment doesn't care whether it came
| from a VW TDI or a F350, just the amount.
|
| But it is also far far easier to implement such low
| emission standards in the US because we just don't really
| use diesel like that.
|
| And when you get to the heavy duty pickups (F250, F350,
| etc.), then most of that goes out of the window.
| testing22321 wrote:
| They are not stricter, just different.
|
| US emissions standards don't allow some things that euro6+
| does, and visa versa.
|
| There is an effort to make them overlap to make it easier
| to meet both standards.
| pqtyw wrote:
| What US competitors? Tesla is the only single American
| company that has had any success besides maybe Ford (but Ford
| Europe has a similar relationship to it's American parent
| company that Opel and GM used to have i.e. in a large part
| it's an European company)
| neilv wrote:
| I'm not sure only the German market was meant by OP.
|
| VW has international sales, and OP's implication might've
| been that Germany has a national interest in VW being
| competitive.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > only the German market
|
| Well yes, I of course meant the entire EU+UK market.
| Regardless besides US and a handful of other countries VW
| is hardly competing that much with any American car
| companies anywhere (besides Tesla).
|
| American car makers are still struggling a lot more in
| relative market share terms (GM+Ford+Tesla barely had
| over 33% in 2024 in the US). While VW alone had 26% in
| EU/UK/EFTA (just German companies have 39% of the entire
| market there)
| oblio wrote:
| VW has just become the #1 EV seller in Europe.
| kunzhi wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Luigi as privatized accountability?
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| If powerful people were afraid they would be a lot less
| unhinged.
| weard_beard wrote:
| It's true. The only check on most corporate fraud is an
| engineer with an Annecdote of real consequences.
| philwelch wrote:
| This isn't how human psychology works at all.
| mg794613 wrote:
| This isn't how _normal_ human psychology works at all.
|
| We're talking about sociopaths, not people like you and
| me.
|
| How much of a percentage that is on that level, we can
| guess.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Wanna share with us what makes you qualified to make such
| definitive statements on human psychology?
| philwelch wrote:
| You don't have to be an expert to know that fear and
| panic don't make people hinged, they make them even more
| unhinged.
|
| In particular, terroristic violence almost always incites
| spiteful reaction against the perpetrators and anyone
| associated with them.
| const_cast wrote:
| I mean, in the past we used to just hang or bomb rich
| people that got too close to the sun.
|
| People like Carnegie built 1500 public libraries because
| he knew the game. He knew that his position as part of
| the ultra-wealthy made him a target, and he had to toe a
| line. He need to maximize exploitation but not too much,
| so as to not cause a stir. He did a pretty good job. Some
| people didn't do such a good job - we don't hear about
| them because they and their families were murdered.
|
| Rich people today are much safer, mostly due to people
| being better people and technology.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think that's accurate at all. It's true that rich
| people in Carnegie's day had more concern about organized
| violence against them, but most of them preferred to deal
| with it by getting the Pinkertons or the military to stop
| you from organizing _anything_ against them. Late 1800s
| labor disputes killed a lot more workers than
| millionaires.
| philwelch wrote:
| Gilded Age industrialists in America weren't murdered by
| angry mobs, that's just a sick terroristic left wing
| fantasy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| SBF is in prison, so it happens sometimes.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Usually it happens only if you steal from investors. Stealing
| from consumers is fine.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Stealing from employees is just normal business in the US.
| $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered for US workers
| between 2021 and 2023. Imagine how much wasn't recovered.
| It is often the least able to take action/most in need of
| every dollar of their income that are stolen from. You can
| tell a lot about a society by how it treats those with the
| least power versus those with power.
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021-23/
| nickff wrote:
| Stealing from employers is also quite normalized, and
| almost nobody goes to prison for doing very little work,
| spending most of their day on social media (especially
| common for remote work).
| Teever wrote:
| That isn't theft.
|
| If an employee completes all the work assigned to them
| and passes performance reviews then what you're
| describing is a suboptimal use of the employees on the
| part of the employer.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Real theft by employees is also extremely common.
| Especially in retail and food service.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > retail and food service.
|
| Two industries that typically pay significantly less than
| a living wage and which have a reputation for treating
| their employees like absolute dirt.
|
| Would you respect your employer if they didn't respect
| you?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My sister was a waitress at Red Lobster in somewhat of a
| tourism city and made absolute bank. She still stole
| stuff like cutlery, salt shakers, etc. Let's not pretend
| that most people that are stealing are Robin Hood types.
| reactordev wrote:
| Target has a whole surveillance department just for this
| Teever wrote:
| When this conversation comes up it is typically mentioned
| that employers have mechanisms of enforcement that are
| tied to their basic accounting required for taxes as well
| as surveillance cameras that are also meant to watch
| customers for theft. They also have the ability to
| contact law enforcement and have their employees arrested
| for theft.
|
| There is an asymmetry in this relationship however where
| employees don't practically have recourse when their
| employers steal from them.
| triceratops wrote:
| And is treated as a criminal matter. But the manager
| telling employees to clock out before their shift ends is
| a civil matter.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Most often an employee caught stealing is just fired. If
| there's significant value involved perhaps the police
| would get a call.
|
| Telling an employee to clock out and keep working is a
| labor law violation, that's not just a civil matter. It
| happens, but often with the agreement of the employee.
| I.e. "I know you're about to hit overtime, so if you
| clock out I'll give you cash, otherwise I have to send
| you home."
| triceratops wrote:
| The point is the police will take a complaint in the case
| of employee theft.
|
| And the "agreement" of the employee is utterly
| meaningless because it's not a negotiation between
| equals. Coercion is more accurate.
|
| > labor law violation, that's not just a civil matter
|
| So people go to jail over it? It goes on their criminal
| record and comes up in background checks?
|
| > I'll give you cash
|
| This part sounds like pure fantasy. And the cash would be
| less than overtime pay (otherwise why even make the
| offer) so it's still wage theft.
| try_the_bass wrote:
| > If an employee completes all the work assigned to them
|
| I don't think this was implied in their statement?
| const_cast wrote:
| Even if it wasn't, being a poor worker still isn't theft,
| and it's the companies responsibility to both measure and
| correct employee performance. If they're bad at that and
| these things go under the radar, that's still on the
| employer.
|
| The only way employees can steal is if they steal time,
| like clocking in then going home. Salary employees are
| not paid by time, so they cannot steal time. Employers
| want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to
| consider salary employees not time based when it comes to
| OT, but when it comes to day-to-day they DO want them to
| be considered time-based. Not how it works. Your workers
| being bad at their job is not theft, it's just
| incompetence.
| exe34 wrote:
| Working too hard is rewarded with more work.
| nickff wrote:
| I agree, but this point seems to be orthogonal to the
| matters being discussed here. Your point is roughly
| analogous to 'providing too much consumer surplus is
| rewarded with more customers'.
| speff wrote:
| That seems like a really small number? To compare - total
| US retail shrink in those years combined was a little
| over $300B[0] - averaging about 1.5% of sales. $1.5B
| seems like a rounding error when talking in those terms.
|
| [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-retailers-cite-
| rising-theft-...
| ljf wrote:
| I think their point was that this was all that was
| recovered, from the approx $20b stolen each year through
| wage theft. I believe wage theft is one of the largest
| value crime by $ amount in the US - but is very rarely
| prosecuted.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
|
| Actually it turns out fraud and white collar crime takes
| more out of the American economy.
| speff wrote:
| I skimmed the article - any significant concrete numbers
| were all sourced to the EPI site linked by the GP.
| There's an unsourced FBI chart that says >19B in 2012,
| but I couldn't find the actual numbers when I looked.
| Frankly - I don't trust this claim if the only one
| actually putting big numbers on it is one publication.
|
| EDIT: I'm going to cast more suspicion on the FBI graph.
| According to a 2022 report[0], the number of robbery
| offenses reported in 2018 was 1691 cases. The median loss
| being about $2k. Doing some caveman-math, that's about
| $3B lost to robbery in 2018. Unless we went through some
| insane spike of lawlessness between 2012 and 2018, I
| don't see how $340m in 2012 jumps to $3B in 2018.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-
| and-pu...
| microtherion wrote:
| 1691 * $2k is about $3M, not $3B.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| You are comparing ACTUAL recovered wage theft numbers to
| industry trade group estimated numbers and making
| claims/drawing conclusions off of two totally differently
| types of numbers?
|
| Why not compare recovered to recovered, which are pretty
| close to each other?
| https://hayesinternational.com/news/annual-retail-theft-
| surv...
|
| That business appears to steal as much from their workers
| as criminal theft rings surely is kind of a big deal
| (based on the matching ACTUAL recovery numbers).
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Let's be conservative by taking GDP for only the middle
| year. In 2022 American GDP was 26 trillion (rounded
| down). Let's also gross up the stolen wages from your
| comment to 2.6 billion.
|
| That's 0.01% -- one percent of one percent. That's a
| background noise level, or simple error rate level, or
| rounding error level. And because of our conservative
| assumptions, over those three years GDP is actually maybe
| 3x higher and the reported wage theft per year maybe 20%
| of the figure used, so it's more like approx 0.002%.
|
| If wage theft is "just normal business in the US" it's
| not a very big business!
| squigz wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand your point? Does
| it being a small % of the GDP matter to those stolen
| from? Does it mean we shouldn't attempt to remedy it?
| throwpoaster wrote:
| We should care about it 0.002% as much as we care about
| other economic problems.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Not quite- from a strictly financial perspective, it
| means we should care 0.002% as much as we care about an
| intervention that doubles the GDP or eliminates 100% it.
| Neither exists, so we're better off comparing to other
| theft- this is about 15% of numbers for retail shrink,
| 50% of reported personal theft, so this suggests we
| should care proportionally.
|
| But I don't know about the strict financial analysis. I'm
| pretty sure it would tell us to have negative care about
| a serial killer that targets the homeless.
| ljf wrote:
| Wage theft takes more money out of people's pockets than
| robbery, auto theft, burglary and larceny combined.
|
| Should we not care about them as they are such a small
| part of gdp?
|
| Wage theft is about $20b a year.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
| spookie wrote:
| We all know employees generate more revenue than what
| they're paid. Otherwise you wouldn't have a successful
| business.
|
| Comparing wages with GDP in this context doesn't prove
| anything.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The RECOVERED number matches retail theft recovery
| numbers. So it is AT LEAST on par with organized and
| unorganized criminal retail theft. I'd say that is
| significant (I would argue retail theft if much easier to
| catch and pursued much more often, making wage theft a
| larger issue) especially as it's happening within the
| structure of/approved by businesses.
|
| https://hayesinternational.com/news/annual-retail-theft-
| surv...
| bilekas wrote:
| This comment is so on point, reminds me of the old one
| about if you owe the bank 500k they own you, but if you owe
| then 2Billion you own them. Something along those lines,
| maybe I'm only noticing it more recently but it seems to me
| that there's also a higher prevalence of "Non class
| actions" clauses in terms and conditions these days too.
|
| It's amazing how badly customers are willing to be treated
| but at the same time, you're not obliged to buy a service
| so I can't really rant too much.
|
| Edit : Found the quote and unironically it's credited as an
| American Proverb.
|
| > If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank
| owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars,
| you own the bank. -- American Proverb.
| teddyh wrote:
| Previously discussed here on HN:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41798027>
| tyre wrote:
| Matt Levine:
|
| "I find all of this so weird because of how it elevates
| finance. [Various cases] imply that we are not entitled to
| be protected from pollution as citizens, or as humans.
| [Another] implies that we are not entitled to be told the
| truth as citizens. (Which: is true!) Rather, in each case,
| we are only entitled to be protected from lies as
| shareholders. The great harm of pollution, or of political
| dishonesty, is that it might lower the share prices of the
| companies we own."
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Similarly Elizabeth Holmes (In jail, but not for
| providing bad medical services.)
| tough wrote:
| Her husband is going for v2 with her advising from there
| lol
| immibis wrote:
| Obviously the solution is to buy one share in every
| company.
| benoau wrote:
| We're in the midst of watching Apple get away with criminal
| contempt for forcing consumers to be as ignorant as
| possible of their IAP fees - including forcing Patreon to
| exclusively use them while under court order to allow them
| to link to their own payments!
| M95D wrote:
| The american corporations were always "special".
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| SBF stole from rich people. Strategic error on his part.
| tcgv wrote:
| True, but context matters. SBF was running a disruptive
| crypto startup that drew intense scrutiny, and his
| operations were so amateurish that proving misconduct was
| straightforward. Traditional corporations tend to reduce
| the risk of prison-worthy exposure thanks to tighter
| compliance and better legal insulation, even when the harm
| is just as large.
| fuddy wrote:
| His larger problem was doing everything a lawyer would tell
| you not to do. The world and a sufficient portion of any 12
| person subsample could have accepted that these were
| suckers far more readily than Madoff's victims. But he
| broke every rule about talking, letting people know he was
| making up required departments, mixing conflicts of
| interest, etc.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| With the political tensions in the US (I'm not trying to fan
| any flames - wait to read the full thing), I think that SBF
| made the mistake to 'bet on both teams - with a smile', and
| he is punished because teamA that eventually won punished him
| for funding teamB as well. So a friend of our enemy is our
| enemy (!?). Also, he may have been seen as a 'traitor' by
| both teams. I know about the case what I've read in some news
| sites and Coffeezilla/Voidzilla, and it seems like the guy
| should be behind bars. And with that said, I rarely celebrate
| when someone loses their freedom. I mostly feel sorry for
| them and their life's choices (and the fact that with being
| in prison he made his own life hell, and put in some very
| difficult position everyone near/around him).
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| He'll be pardoned.
|
| But at least he's there for a bit
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Qie (Steal)Gou (hook)Zhe (people)Zhu (gets a death sentence)
|
| Qie (Steal)Guo (country)Zhe (people)Hou (gets to be the king)
| OJFord wrote:
| Is this missing a sentence like 'there is a saying in
| mandarin:'?
| docsaintly wrote:
| I think they meant: Qie Gou Zhe Zhu ,Qie Guo Zhe Hou
| qiegouzhe zhu, qieguozhe hou He who steals a belt buckle
| pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a
| feudal lord.
|
| Yes, it is a Chinese idiom.
| anthk wrote:
| The same in Spanish. Steal a hen, get a harsh sentence.
| Steal millions, you are now a respectable 'businessman'.
| atrocious wrote:
| The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose
| from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose
| Who steals the common from off the goose.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Kill a man you're a murderer. Kill millions and you're a
| statesman.
| moomin wrote:
| Pretty sure that's known as The Blair Doctrine.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Or the Stalin doctrine, "One death is a tragedy, a
| million deaths a statistic"
| echelon wrote:
| This is a remarkably good idiom that rings true.
|
| Similar to Paul Getty's quote, "If you owe the bank $100,
| that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's
| the bank's problem."
|
| But in this case, it cuts much deeper and darker.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think that's a pretty different concept being expressed
| by that one.
|
| The others are about getting away with something by just
| making the crime big enough that it's evaluated and handled
| in a totally different arena.
|
| The bank can still destroy the rest of your life, so you
| didn't get away with anything (setting aside bankrupcy and
| how you can actually usually start over, and that may or
| may not be all that terrible for you).
|
| The banking one is just saying that the bank can not get
| 100 million from you no matter what they do, because it
| simply doesn't exist. In that case, everyone still agrees
| you still owe it and they are entitled to it. You didn't
| gain anything by going big enough. And it's not really true
| that it's the banks problem instead of yours. The bank has
| a problem, but you still also have a problem.
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| "...setting aside bankrupcy and how you can actually
| usually start over, and that may or may not be all that
| terrible for you..." You might even be elected
| president...:-p
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| that's really not what it means, it means that if you owe
| the bank enough money (which is probably more than 100
| million nowadays for any significant bank) then it is you
| in the position of power in relation to the bank, when
| the bank comes and says hey we need the money sure you
| have the "problem" that you need to pay it, but let's say
| you can pay it no sweat, but you'd rather not because
| reasons so you say hmm, I think I would like to
| renegotiate the interest and wait a year before paying,
| and unless things are very extreme the bank will probably
| have to acquiesce, if they don't they are basically
| letting the world know hey, we have a 100 million dollar
| problem, but until they make that announcement that 100
| million is just another asset the bank has.
|
| If you owe the bank enough money, you have the power in
| the relationship in most cases.
| achierius wrote:
| "He who steals from one citizen," said Cato, "ends his days
| in fetters and chains; but he who steals from all ends them
| in purple and gold."
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > "Fures," inquit [Cato], "privatorum furtorum in nervo
| atque in compedibus aetatem agunt, fures publici in auro
| atque in purpura."
|
| A. Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_ , XI, 18, 18.
|
| https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Gellius/
| 1...
| MPSFounder wrote:
| At least something came out of it. In 08, all the executives
| that tanked our economy retired and are enjoying manors in the
| Hampton and socialize in country clubs on Long Island. Cheney,
| an oil executive, started a war based on lies when he landed in
| the highest office of the land, and now owns hundreds of acres
| in Wyoming based on oil profits Halliburton extracted (and paid
| him as a consultant for 5years after his VP position, whatever
| that means). I wish we did a better job in the US sending our
| criminals to prison, but I guess a neoliberal capitalist
| society will always favor a) high fines over justice for white
| collar crimes, b) as little attention as possible, given a
| supposedly free media can make a raucous encore and draw more
| attention. It is a facet of the trade.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Auto industry is the material God of Germany. Similar to SW
| companies in the US. These people have immunity solely because
| they support the system.
|
| Do you think the US would extradit top level FAANG people if
| they indirectly harmed some foreign country? No way!
| alanl wrote:
| Ireland jailed a 3 or 4 bankers after the crash.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drumm
|
| It took 10 yrs to convict them mind you, and as I understand it
| they're all out now.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I stand corrected. Thanks.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| And I think there is a good reason for that. When a company
| steals billions from customers, the entire company is
| responsible, and the entire company profits from the crime. So
| why single out a few executives? Everyone shall be punished:
| the CEO of course, but also every employee, every shareholder.
| You have a single VW stock, you are responsible too.
|
| So, how do you punish everyone fairly? By fining the company
| for a large amount of money. Shareholders lose their value,
| employees don't get their raise, and execs won't get their
| bonus, there is a good chance they get fired too. Companies are
| for profit, it is even more true for public companies, for
| which profit is their duty to their shareholders. So hit where
| it hurts, that is profits.
|
| As for jailing CEOs, what will it bring? Don't forget that a
| CEO is just an employee, hired by the directors to maximize
| profits for the shareholders. If the entire company is corrupt,
| everyone will be more than happy to hire scapegoat CEOs if it
| can serve their interests. Jailing them will solve nothing, it
| may even be counter productive as those who are most likely to
| get that job are people who are ready to risk prison to win
| big, a crime lord profile.
|
| There are still reasons to jail the CEO, but only if he
| personally deceived the rest of the company and shareholders,
| but that is effectively the same as stealing from the company.
| Neywiny wrote:
| My issue with your comment is that you're taking the humanity
| out of it. A person or group of people decided to commit
| crimes. Go to jail. If a group of people hired a scapegoat,
| that group still would've conspired to commit crimes. That's
| a punishable offense. Punish them. You can punish a board of
| directors. You can persecute a C-suite. They're all humans.
| That's the way justice is. Nobody is above the law.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| Corporate death penalty. I want to see these groups of
| "shareholder value" get destroyed. Equal to a damage of a
| normal death penalty to an individual. Spread the
| organization to the winds.
|
| If that means a "company" becomes smaller, with more
| isolated crews run by their own leadership, good.
| Neywiny wrote:
| I could see there being an issue with too much forced
| collusion if companies are too small to operate. Like how
| a lot of companies put all the blame on a profitless,
| employee-less "subsidiary" and say "oh no, we can't pay a
| fine, we have no money. We gave all our profits to
| Company Inc Ltd, we're just Company Inc." We'd need to
| fix that first. Then corporate death penalty. Which I
| believe does exist but isn't used very often. I think
| some court rulings have forbidden operations in certain
| states.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > So, how do you punish everyone fairly?
|
| By punishing those who decided to commit the crime?
| Indirectly benefiting from somebody's else illegal actions is
| not a crime (you might be required to pay it back but that's
| it..).
|
| Generally executives are the ones who benefit the most of
| these case and then leave the rest of of the company and the
| shareholders on the hook while they move on or retire.
|
| > and execs won't get their bonus,
|
| What if they already have their bonuses? Generally it might
| take years for any investigation to conclude, often
| executives who benefited from it couldn't care less what
| happens to the company they don't work at anymore anyway.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No. Decision making authority is concentrated in executives
| and managers, and likewise so should the lgal responsibility
| be. Spreading it evenly across the whole entity such that the
| janitor is punished in the same proportion as the individuals
| who decide to commit fraud is nonsensical. shareholders
| should certainly take a hit, but consequences should be
| administered in proportion to the degree of authority
| exercised in the commission of the crime.
| mcv wrote:
| Most blatant case was when the HSBC bank was found guilty of
| laundering billions for Mexican drug cartels. Any person found
| guilty of that, would have gone to prison for years, but nobody
| at HSBC went to prison, and the bank was fined mere millions
| for the crime of laundering billions. I'm sure that taught them
| a lesson.
|
| So I'm glad finally seeing some repercussions for corporate
| crime.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > the 2008 banking disaster
|
| We would do well to overhaul the banking system by
| categorically eliminating usury and much speculative nonsense.
| It is incredible the amount of rationalization that goes into
| propping up these morally indefensible practices. Criminalizing
| them will go a long way to eliminate many legitimized patterns
| of economic exploitation.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Same in USA, tons of corps misappropriated funds that were
| meant to help keep employees hired. Almost no prosecutionsat
| all and the records the government kept were abysmal
| wildrice wrote:
| I always thought there was a tremendous irony in Germany's far
| left heavily protesting Tesla for Elon's speech while their own
| corporate giant committed widespread emissions fraud for years
| bantunes wrote:
| Why is this irony? One is being done out in the open and the
| other was unknown for years, so unless "the far left" knew
| about the defeat devices, this is a false dichotomy.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Its a false dichotomy either way because VW and the handling
| of the administration back then was heavily criticized by
| many parties, including left leaning parties like the greens
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The Scandal was big in Germany and contrary to complaints about
| Musk there was quite a lot legal action against VW (while law
| has some restrictions preventing huge damage claims as in the
| US) so I don't really understand the comparison.
| Flemlo wrote:
| These are two issues independent of each other.
|
| One argument doesn't make the other in any way worse or better
|
| I'm a German, I was not aware that VW was doing this until it
| came out and it was a huge blow out.
|
| Do you think people just test their cars fume output?! You do
| understand that the software was build to detect being on a
| test stand right?
|
| Who reverse engineers software like this...
| JHer wrote:
| I don't understand. It's not like the far left is Volkswagen's
| fan club?
| croes wrote:
| There were multiple protests in 2016.
|
| They protest every time a company fucks up like that.
| rat87 wrote:
| Elon campaigned for the German far right party which basically
| everyone including Germans conservative party regards as
| fascist. It's not a far left thing to oppose that
| Tomte wrote:
| And one engineer went on vacation to America. Congratulations,
| you've won seven years in a foreign prison!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Schmidt_(engineer)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's the other way around, he was US-based and went for a
| vacation to Germany.
| Tomte wrote:
| He used to work in the US, but at the time of the US
| prosecution and his arrest he was back in Wolfsburg, and the
| vacation was in Florida.
|
| The English Wikipedia article isn't terribly clear about
| that.
| dehugger wrote:
| He is a German national though. Bit of a confusing situation.
| bhelkey wrote:
| Do you have a source for this?
|
| CNN reports that he was on vacation to Florida and was
| arrested in the airport awaiting a flight home to Germany
| [1].
|
| [1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/17/news/companies/volkswage
| n-e...
| xrd wrote:
| Arrested in a men's bathroom, no less!
| kotaKat wrote:
| "Conspiracy to defraud the United States" is a more dignified
| charge to get in an airport bathroom than what happens when
| you have a "wide stance" as a Senator.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| that wikipedia article is atrociously written holy cow. "pawn
| sacrifice"?!?
| fch42 wrote:
| "Bauernopfer" (German for "pawn sacrifice") is a common term
| in German to mean "sacrificing someone insignificant to get
| the big guy out of trouble".
|
| So the English translation might be machine-done; in the
| original German, the word makes a lot of sense and carries a
| definite meaning.
| hollerith wrote:
| The 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 the systems used to make Volkswagen diesels appear
| to comply with U.S. pollution standards, when instead they could
| emit up to 40 times the allowed levels of smog-forming compounds
| in normal driving." He cooperated with prosecutors and was
| released from prison in 2019.
|
| I vaguely remember that the top execs were charged by US
| (Federal) prosecutors (in 2017) but the German government refused
| to extradict. Schmidt was arrested and tried only because he made
| the mistake of traveling to the US after the scandal came to
| light (although of course the German Court might have gotten
| around to trying him like they tried the execs in this current
| news story).
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| 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.
| bhelkey wrote:
| The VX emission cheating scandal came to light a decade ago
| in 2015. If a 78 year old is too old to prosecute, Germany
| should have prosecuted him a decade ago when he was 68.
|
| Instead, Germany refused to extradite him to the US to stand
| trial in 2017 [1].
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-
| volkswage...
| ratatoskrt wrote:
| Many countries do not legally permit the extradition of
| their own citizens. In Germany, extradition is generally
| only allowed to other EU countries, which meant the German
| government's options were quite limited.
| gjvc wrote:
| Next, bring back hanging for corporate manslaughter.
| jacknews wrote:
| What about major shareholders?
|
| Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply pleased
| when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.
| transcriptase wrote:
| And?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Instead of fines the government should be granted an ownership
| percentage in companies that break that law (thus diluting
| ownership and directly impacting owners). That way the
| punishment impacts shareholders/owners, but in way that keeps
| corporate protections so that society can continue to function.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| And for egregious behavior like Chevron in Ecuador, the
| government should cut up and sell the company in a million
| useless pieces completely destroying all shareholder value.
|
| I wish someone would give me a chance to vote to repeal the
| personal death penalty and create the corporate death
| penalty.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The Chevron Ecuador story is a great example of how
| impossible discussions on corporate misconduct can get.
| Chevron has successfully argued in both the US and an
| international tribunal that the Ecuadorian judgment was
| procured through corruption and bribery. But oil companies
| are very unpopular, so many people who encounter the case
| assume that Chevron must have been in the wrong, and the
| lawyer who was disbarred and jailed for his role in that
| corruption must be right.
| triceratops wrote:
| That's what the "limited" in "limited company" means. Blame the
| board members and executive management, sure. But it's hard to
| go beyond that.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply
| pleased when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.
|
| It is kind of ridiculous to believe that either the government
| of lower Saxony or the UAE or the Porsche Piech family were
| aware of this.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| The 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?
| johnklos wrote:
| I don't think software engineers were independently looking at
| emissions data and unilaterally decided to "fix" the emissions
| shortcomings in software. I think they were told by others to
| do that. It's good that Germany is going after the people who
| decided that fraud was the answer.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > It's good that Germany is going after the people who
| decided that fraud
|
| When the VW scandal broke, the US indicted seven senior
| executives. None of these seven were extradited to the US to
| stand trial [1].
|
| The VW scandal was made public in 2015 [2] and involved
| cheating since 2009. Sentencing only two executives to jail a
| decade after their wrong doing made international news does
| not send a strong message.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-
| volkswage...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772
| bhelkey wrote:
| When the VW scandal broke, the US indicted seven senior
| executives [1]. Germany did not cooperate. None of these seven
| were extradited to the US to stand trial.
|
| One more mid level engineer involved in the scandal made the
| mistake of taking a vacation to Florida. He was arrested in the
| airport awaiting his flight home to Germany [2]. He was
| sentenced to 84 months in prison but was let out after serving
| half of that sentence [3].
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-
| volkswage...
|
| [2]
| https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/17/news/companies/volkswagen-e...
|
| [3] https://www.autonews.com/automakers/ex-vw-manager-schmidt-
| ge...
| sambeau wrote:
| Can we so CrowdStrike next?
| crop_rotation wrote:
| While CrowdStrike was incompetent, this is remotely not the
| same thing as what VW did. What CrowdStrike did should be best
| punished by the market and in court by companies who were their
| customers.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Crowdstrike stock price seems to be close to an all time
| high.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| There are two or three companies that do what CrowdStrike
| does on a scale CrowdStrike supports. Not necessarily on a
| technical level, but on a CEO-goes-to-the-same-golf-clubs
| level of business support. CrowdStrike was probably the
| worst of the bunch, but any of them can cause the problems
| CrowdStrike caused.
|
| It'll happen again, though probably on a smaller scale.
| Software like CrowdStrike's is a massive single point of
| failure but spending twice the money to have a backup suite
| on part of the network to maintain basic operations when
| the primary suite crashes is not very popular. The short
| hit to productivity is worth the emergency prep in terms of
| financial output, and the people spending weeks on end
| recovering systems are expendable anyway.
| an0malous wrote:
| "Competition is for losers"
| paulddraper wrote:
| Sure, if they broke any laws.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Nice.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| We would see some world change finally if this became the norm.
| Breaking the law in a corporate suit shouldn't be any different
| than breaking the law as a soldier or citizen. Corporations have
| been doing war crimes on us for quite some time now.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| This is the norm.
| Improvement wrote:
| Better source to read without ads:
| https://www.occrp.org/en/news/former-vw-managers-sentenced-o...
| lblume wrote:
| People still use the web without adblockers?
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| The headline says "execs" but I don't see any Board members
| getting prison terms. Martin Winterkorn, the CEO, has basically
| escaped prosecution altogether.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| It would be unlikely (not impossible) that board members would
| be briefed about ongoing criminal behaviour, and certainly not
| something so deep into operations as how the ECU is being
| programmed.
|
| Can a board member be reasonably responsible for the actions of
| tens of thousands of employees if they have not explicitly
| enabled or condoned criminal behaviour?
|
| The person that would benefit the most would be a senior
| executive who stands to gain a promotion, bonus or land an even
| better job elsewhere.
|
| A former prime minister of my country was fined over $6 million
| for being on the board of a company what traded while
| insolvent. Not a prison sentence but a harsh penalty for
| someone that was not super rich (as far as I am aware).
| triceratops wrote:
| They should at least be barred from being board members for a
| certain period of time.
| bhelkey wrote:
| The US indicted seven senior executives including Martin
| Winterkorn in 2017 [1]. None of these seven were extradited
| from Germany to the US to face trial.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-
| volkswage...
| constantcrying wrote:
| >but I don't see any Board members getting prison terms.
|
| The head of development, a board member, got a suspended
| sentence.
|
| >Martin Winterkorn, the CEO, has basically escaped prosecution
| altogether.
|
| How so?
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| This article is better though nothing I've seen names the
| executives (different media law maybe).
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/4-ex-vw-managers-guilty-of-fraud-over-...
|
| "A former head of diesel engine development was sentenced to four
| and a half years in prison. The former head of drive electronics
| received two years and seven months in prison.
|
| The highest-ranking defendant, a former member of the Volkswagen
| brand's development board, received one year and three months'
| probation. A former department head was sentenced to one year and
| ten months' probation."
|
| Doesn't sound like it got near the C suite.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Doesn't sound like it got near the C suite.
|
| Your quote shows that it was the CTO who got the suspended
| sentence and the trial for the CEO is pending. The head of the
| board was indicted as well, but not convicted.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Two engineers that I know of got the following: James Liang got
| 40 months Schmidt was sentenced to 84 months
|
| Then the executives Jens Hadler four and a half years in prison
| Hanno Jelden two years and seven months
|
| Prosecutors are still investigating and trying to shake out more.
| This appears to be a wide conspiracy within VW.
| saravanan2661 wrote:
| Where can one find these "defeat devices"? (asking for
| educational purposes)
| k4rli wrote:
| IIRC it was just the firmware in Bosch ECUs.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The ECUs, the computer controlling the engine was programmed in
| a way in which it could detect the conditions of a test being
| run and alter it's behavior.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Now do Boeing!
| lysace wrote:
| During this admin?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/23/boeing-737-max-crashes-doj.h...
| (3 days ago)
|
| > Boeing, Justice Department reach deal to avoid prosecution
| over deadly 737 Max crashes
|
| See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44078413 (15
| comments)
|
| It seems that at the very least manslaughter is legal in the US
| now, provided you pay $1.28M per victim.
| godelski wrote:
| This is good to see. Often we see the scandal unfold but hear
| very little about the followups. They're long, drawn out, and
| incredibly boring. But at the end, there's something very
| valuable.
|
| Without these followups the public feel like they just get away,
| and in some cases they do. I'd argue that without seeing the
| punishment we are encouraging these crimes.
|
| I'd much rather read this kind of news than whatever filler
| bullshit is on the front page of the news now.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| FINALLY!
|
| It's the least they could do for the reputation of German
| engineering.
|
| [ if (CAUGHT): toss an MBA on the barbie ]
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| #irony You mean it wasn't the doing of the Southern European
| engineers at Volkswagen? #irony
| WrongOnInternet wrote:
| > The court sentenced two of the former executives to prison for
| several years...
|
| Anyone here know German? I couldn't find a good translation for
| the number "several."
| detaro wrote:
| (I assume you ask about the exact numbers, not how to translate
| it?) The actual prison sentences are 4.5 years for the former
| head of diesel engine development, 2 years 7 months for the
| former head of engine electronics. Two more got sentenced on
| probation, a former (guessing at the translation here) Chief
| R&D Officer for 1 year 3 months, a (unspecified in the source
| I'm reading) department head 1 year 10 months.
|
| Apparently 31 more people are targeted by further cases. (+
| Winterkorn, but I wouldn't be surprised if he never makes it to
| trial given it's been aborted twice already due to health
| issues)
| WrongOnInternet wrote:
| Yes, thanks for doing the journalism that the author of the
| story could not be bothered to do.
| Animats wrote:
| The head of Diesel engine development and the head of powertrain
| electronics are going to jail. Two CEOs and the chairman got off.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-26 23:01 UTC)