Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Finally


The standard procedure for going after large corporate criminals has been for a negotiated settlement involving an appropriately small payment of fines and recompense for the injured parties lawyers. The corporate criminal was usually allowed to neither admit or deny wrongdoing and promise never to do it again to avoid besmirching their spotless reputation. This is about to change with Volkswagen.
Volkswagen is on the verge of pleading guilty to criminal charges and paying $4.3 billion in fines, in a deal that would resolve a federal criminal investigation into its cheating on vehicle emissions tests, the automaker said on Tuesday.

The expected guilty plea and the recent arrest of a Volkswagen executive on conspiracy charges buck a pattern of companies essentially paying their way out of criminal accusations. While companies often face large fines for wrongdoing, it is far less common for them to admit to breaking the law.

As a result of the deal, Volkswagen could be required to cooperate with investigations into individual company employees, accelerating the pace of those cases.

A guilty plea would also be likely to weaken the company’s ability to defend itself against investigations by state attorneys general, and against lawsuits brought by shareholders who accuse Volkswagen of waiting too long to disclose the financial risk of its emissions cheating.

According to two people briefed on the settlement, Volkswagen is expected to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act, customs violations, and obstruction of justice. The people could not talk publicly about the deal because it was not yet final. Many of the 600,000 cars in the United States equipped with the emissions-cheating software were imported from Germany or Mexico.

The $4.3 billion in fines covers criminal and civil aspects of the government’s case, including environmental and customs-related penalties. The fines would bring the total cost of the scandal to Volkswagen in the United States to $20 billion, including settlements of civil suits by car owners, certainly one of the most costly corporate scandals in history.

The details of the deal, which requires the approval of the company’s management and supervisory boards, were provided by Volkswagen in a financial disclosure on Tuesday. Volkswagen said in the disclosure that money it had set aside for scandal-related costs would be insufficient to cover the latest agreement. A vote on the matter could come on Wednesday.
The world would be a better place if Holder had done this sort of settlement with the banksters and mortgage fraudsters.

Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]