Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Volkswagen Fined One Billion Euros By German Prosecutors Over Emissions Cheating (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the no-mercy dept.

Volkswagen was fined one billion euros ($1.18 billion) over diesel emissions cheating in what amounts to one of the highest ever fines imposed by German authorities against a company, public prosecutors said on Wednesday. From a report: The German fine follows a U.S. plea agreement from January 2017 when VW agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil penalties for installing illegal software in diesel engines to cheat strict U.S. anti-pollution tests. "Following thorough examination, Volkswagen AG accepted the fine and it will not lodge an appeal against it. Volkswagen AG, by doing so, admits its responsibility for the diesel crisis and considers this as a further major step toward the latter being overcome," it said in a statement. The fine is the latest blow to Germany's auto industry which cannot seem to catch a break from the diesel emissions crisis. Germany's government on Monday ordered Daimler to recall nearly 240,000 cars fitted with illicit emissions-control devices, part of a total of 774,000 models affected in Europe as a whole.

51 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong link by divide+overflow · · Score: 1

    Link takes you to Reuters article "Fox shares pop ahead of expected Comcast bid"

  2. Proper link by divide+overflow · · Score: 4, Informative

    The proper link is here: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

    1. Re:Proper link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes.... because consumers have no other place to buy cars. Oh wait.
      Maybe cars are a competitive market and VW will not be able to pass this straight to their customers.
      I take you are American, and as such not really familiar with competitive markets.

  3. Probably not enough by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    I don't think this'll cover damages to folks health did to dirty air let alone be more than the profit they made cheating. Until we find them more than the money they made they're gonna keep doing this crap.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Probably not enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think this'll cover damages to folks health did to dirty air let alone be more than the profit they made cheating. Until we find them more than the money they made they're gonna keep doing this crap.

      I find it curious that when individual people do bad things, we tend to go to jail, at least fairly often, but when a company does bad things, seldom anyone goes to jail. There needs to be a point where crimes that hurt a lot of people that are caused by deliberate actions result in the people ultimately in charge going to jail.

    2. Re:Probably not enough by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Dirty air? Despite such cheating on emissions and an increase in car use, the air has gotten a hell of a lot cleaner in the past decades and continues to get cleaner still. You can't just claim damages due to "dirty air", at most you could claim damages for much dirtier the air has gotten due to Volkswagen not quite meeting the Euro-6 norm or whatever it is.

      With that said, a stiff fine is in order. But not like this. €1B to Germany, $4.3B to the US, then maybe another $1B by the state of California, $500M to the city of New York, €1.5B to France, €2B to Mexico, well, you get the picture. It's not in anyone's interest to cripple this company, and I would much rather have seen smaller fines plus some jail time for those responsible.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Probably not enough by amorsen · · Score: 1

      Fining them won't be enough. In most cases the managers responsible will have moved on to other jobs and cashed their bonuses before the faeces gets ventilated.

      The US has it right in this case. Criminal charges against the people responsible.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    4. Re:Probably not enough by amorsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can't just claim damages due to "dirty air"

      Of course you can. The air would have been much less polluted if Volkswagen and the others hadn't cheated.

      at most you could claim damages for much dirtier the air has gotten due to Volkswagen not quite meeting the Euro-6 norm or whatever it is.

      There is no "not quite" about it when we are talking about more than an order or magnitude. This is not astronomy.

      It's not in anyone's interest to cripple this company

      It is absolutely in my interest to cripple them. I have zero faith that they will not do the exact same thing the next time they think they can get away with it.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    5. Re:Probably not enough by jimbolauski · · Score: 2

      How much did the average person's probability of having health problems increase due to VW's emissions being higher then advertised?

      --
      Knowledge = Power
      P= W/t
      t=Money
      Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
    6. Re:Probably not enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That is exactly what Germany is doing. However, unlike they US, they have an actual criminal investigation and fair trials, so it takes a bit longer.

    7. Re:Probably not enough by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the issue has to do more with shared or diffused responsibility in groups. The larger the group, the less likely anyone is to get in trouble for it because it's more difficult to attribute the harm to any one person's action. It's the same in large religions or political groups when there's some kind of scandal. At best you might get one or two people thrown under the bus, but you're not even guaranteed that much.

      Should you automatically put the CEO in jail if they weren't responsible and had no part in the wrong doing? What if they were the person who noticed something was wrong and blew the whistle on the wrong doing?

      What about the more morally gray cases where the upper management is pushing hard for results and some of the underlings interpret these directives is creative, yet illegal or unethical ways? We can establish that the CEO might have ultimately caused the behavior, but they never asked for something illegal.

      We could further descend the ladder until we get the bottom rung where the CEO has a signed letter in blood telling everyone to kill and rape babies to increase profits where it's pretty clear that they need to go away for a long while. However, the point is that where in there is the line where you know exactly which people need to go to jail and which people don't?

      With an individual crime it's a lot easier for a jury to wrap their head around what happened and there are far fewer conflicting versions of events. Try to put a group on trial, and no one really knows who to trust when all of the fingers start getting pointed and there's always enough plausible deniability or presumption of innocence that it's a lot harder to get a jury to convict. Also, a large organization is going to have a lot of money to spend on lawyers. Much like a celebrity, they can afford the best legal talent so you're more likely to get away with murder, figuratively and likely literally as well.

    8. Re:Probably not enough by amorsen · · Score: 1

      The car industry is extremely competitive. The factories would not stay closed for long, competitors would take over.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    9. Re:Probably not enough by caelst · · Score: 1

      "It is absolutely in my interest to cripple them. I have zero faith that they will not do the exact same thing the next time they think they can get away with it." So you take a company that is spread across the world supplying much more than just diesel cars, and cripple it.....? I admire your American attitude towards business but it does not work. Why not take a very successful company and work with it to improve on the obvious issues with the auto industry. This is an opportunity to make a change and create awareness.

      --
      C-S-T
    10. Re:Probably not enough by amorsen · · Score: 1

      That is exactly what Germany is doing.

      I would be very interested in a citation for that. A quick Googling didn't turn up anything except US efforts.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    11. Re: Probably not enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Then you must be exceptionally bad at using Google. The domestic criminal investigations against dozens of current and former VW employees has been all over the newspapers for the past two years.

    12. Re:Probably not enough by fazig · · Score: 4, Informative

      The bulk of “Dieselgate” lawsuits are being handled by prosecutors in Braunschweig where four separate sets of criminal proceedings are being conducted against current and former managers of VW, headquartered in nearby Wolfsburg.
      Some 39 individuals including Winterkorn are being investigated over suspected emissions fraud, with the former CEO also being probed for suspected market manipulation together with Hans Dieter Poetsch, the group’s former finance chief who is now supervisory board chairman, and Herbert Diess, now group CEO who joined the firm in July 2015 as head of the VW brand.

      Source: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

      Then we have one of the major German newspapers noting that Winterkorn stands to lose his entire financial existence.
      Source: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wir... (you may need a translator)

    13. Re:Probably not enough by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      It's not in anyone's interest to cripple this company

      Why not? Bankrupt the company. (Or don't if you think the crime wasn't extreme enough. But I have no problems with fines completely wiping a company out.)

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    14. Re:Probably not enough by seltener.name · · Score: 1

      Reason is - those companies have the money to by the politicians - people don't have. So comes that people are f*cked and screwed more and more.

    15. Re:Probably not enough by shilly · · Score: 1

      Depends on what you think the obvious issues are. To me, the obvious issues are that this company behaved in an exceptionally unethical manner, and both it and other companies in the same industry need a strong disincentive, or they will do the same again.

    16. Re:Probably not enough by dehachel12 · · Score: 1

      A lot : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

    17. Re:Probably not enough by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      There are grass-roots lobbying groups that are funded by regular individual citizens. Home School Legal Defense Association is one example. I can't imagine life without it. Actually I don't have to imagine...it would suck.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    18. Re:Probably not enough by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Yeah VW is the largest car company in the world. Too big to fail.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    19. Re:Probably not enough by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Car companies are not just discrete private enterprises. Governments have to have heavy industry available for possible world war. They protect them and other manufacturers.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    20. Re:Probably not enough by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Back in 2000 friends and I would remove catalytic converters and other smog crap from VWs and have them tested at the smog stations. Never failed. Did it with other cars as well. Engines are so efficient these days that smog devices are likely just increasing fuel consumption.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    21. Re:Probably not enough by fish_sauce · · Score: 1

      Instead of putting someone in the company in jail you could ban the company from selling anything for 10 years or something like that. Punish what company wants which is money. Companies will think twice before doing something like that. If the company will go bankrupt due to the ban then so be it, they have themselves to blame.
      Jail is a harsh sentence for a person. People can die of old age in jail, they did it to themselves.
      Not being able to earn money is a harsh sentence for a company. Companies can go bankrupt due to sell ban, they did it to themselves.
      Seems fair and logical.

    22. Re:Probably not enough by fish_sauce · · Score: 1

      Right, people will lose their job. The company could be forced to pay just as normal until they cant any more during the ban.
      That is just how it is. No one said the world was not harsh.

    23. Re: Probably not enough by fish_sauce · · Score: 1

      The law is the law, they would be punished the same way. Just like murderers be punished the same way.
      How are you not following the logic? If you have trouble understanding do not hesitate to ask questions. I do not bite (unless you want me too).

  4. cannot seem to catch a break by Aaden42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The poor, poor oppressed company. It's awful they're being held accountable to the law like us little people are. So unfair!

    1. Re: cannot seem to catch a break by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      That would be perfect in the perfect world, but the regulations are not linear or even close to being uniform. The regulations do not care about the miles per gallon, they only go by how much emissions come out of burning a regulated amount of fuel. This process harms small cars compared to large diesel trucks, because it assumes both vehicles would get the same mileage.

      A v8 turbodiesel dually gets 12mpg and puts out 250 grams of pollution per liter of fuel burned. A 4 cylinder putting out 251 grams per liter while getting 4 times the mpg (48mpg vs 12) is "cheating".

      If we figure the pollution if both vehicles drove 48 miles....

      Truck: (48 / 12) * 250 = 1000 grams of pollution.

      4 cylinder vw: (48 / 48) * 251 = 251 grams of pollution...

      So essentially the regulations don't care that the V8 turbo diesel trucks pollute 1,000 grams on the same drive that the VW would pollute 251 grams. I. E. The truck gets a free pass to pollute 4 times as much while calling rhe VW a "cheater".

      Suuuuuurrreee. But really, fix the regulations.

      You forgot to factor in the amount of mass moved in that distance. What if that V8 turbo diesel is in a bus that is carrying 100 passengers? Or a truck that is hauling 50 tons of some product? How many more trips will that 4 cylinder VW need to make to do the same? Basically it can carry 4 people plus a driver. So it would need to make 25 trips to move the same number of people as the bus. I'll be generous and say you can haul half a ton in the VW. That's 100 trips to haul what the truck did. In either case, the milage per gallon is also going to drop in the VW as well.

  5. Hate train aside... by CaptnCrud · · Score: 4, Funny

    now is the time to pick up a volkswagon for cheap...

  6. Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by dargaud · · Score: 1

    ...not the company. Otherwise the price of my spare parts will go up !

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
    1. Re:Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by amorsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is actually an excellent point!

      A suitable punishment would be to take away all government-granted monopolies, since they do not play by the rules of the government. Goodbye Volkswagen patents!

      That would benefit the owners of Volkswagen vehicles, who were defrauded and who have so far not had a penny in compensation (at least in Europe).

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    2. Re: Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by amorsen · · Score: 2

      The VW owners now have cars with less performance and worse fuel economy than they had when bought. The competitors cheated too, and obviously they should be punished as well, but VW is by far the worst offender according to what has been revealed so far.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    3. Re:Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      How does "Volkswagon's profits are being taken away via fines" correspond to "the prices of my spare parts are going up"? I'm going to need some explaination

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    4. Re:Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by thogard · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can't fine a company. You can only fine its customers or low level employees using existing corporate laws which protect the share holders.

      The correct thing to do is force the company it issue a billion dollars in new stock and give it to the government. That is the only way to fine the share holders who have a responsibility to ensure the board is above board.

    5. Re:Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Executive 1: Damn, we're a billion euros in the hole. There goes my profit sharing.
      Executive 2: Yeah. We'll have to make that billion up somewhere.
      Executive 1: Not to mention the money we're going to lose refitting stock, increased governmental scrutiny, blah blah blah.
      Executive 2: Guess we'll need to bump up prices on everything.
      Executive 1: Yup.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    6. Re:Fine the bosses and the shareholders... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So if a billion dollars shows up on the liabilities side of the balance sheet of a company that won't affect the share price? How exactly are the share holders more culpable than the low level employees or even customers? There is actually a formula for calculating what percentage a of a tax is payed by a company versus it's customers. (For our purposes a fine is equivalent to a tax.) That is, what percentage comes out of profits versus being passed on to customers as higher prices. It depends upon the elasticity of the market for the company's product. In a competitive/elastic market a company can't pass on costs to their customers because the customers will just buy a different company's product. That means it comes out of profits. There is nothing stopping a company from issuing a billion dollars of stock to raise money to pay a fine. There is also nothing stopping a company from buying back a billion dollars of stock on the market if they are forced to issue a billion dollars in new stock and give it to the government. You are wrong about literally everything you said. It's like you didn't think about this at all.

  7. Shareholders fined. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The money will come from the current shareholders of VW.

    The perps are in their mansions, not in jail.

    The perps are not going to pay the fine. There is no clawback provision to get back the bonuses and salaries and incentives they got for achieving the goals by cheating.

    The shareholders should sue the board and ask them to pay the fine without using company funds.

    Board might sue the old office holders and get the money from them.

    But none of that will happen. So next scandal will happen. There is no effective way to punish the Criminal Executive Officers.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Shareholders fined. by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... At least one executive will go to jail.

      --
      Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
    2. Re:Shareholders fined. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Or back in reality, company fined, shareholders hold executives who are left accountable, executives who over saw the scandal are at very real risk of losing it all given the proceedings under way, and the company has been majorly forced to day track a migration away from diesel which has seen its group release several EVs and work on several more... Unlike US companies.

  8. Expect it to be returned. by OpenSourced · · Score: 2

    The government can return the money as tax deductions next year, or the next one, if need be. What should be done, and curiously enough isn't, is to apply the law and forbid the sales of non emission-compliant cars. Most models sold even today are still non compliant, and sold without anybody saying anything. That makes a fool of the law, and of the consumers.

    Instead they give a fine. Great. If anybody, the regulators should be fined. They simply "trusted" the manufacturers, instead of doing a proper independent road test of the new models. It's obvious that everybody was in the deception, and worse still, they still are.

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
    1. Re:Expect it to be returned. by easyTree · · Score: 1

      It's obvious that everybody was in the deception, and worse still, they still are.

      All that matters is that fines can be issued to benefit those running the 'broken rules -> fines' system.

      --
      Requiem for the American Dream
    2. Re:Expect it to be returned. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What should be done, and curiously enough isn't, is to apply the law and forbid the sales of non emission-compliant cars.

      Err did you miss the bit about how the VWs sold now had significantly down rated specs than the same model sold only a few years earlier?

      Instead they give a fine. Great.

      Yeah that's all they did. All of it. Nothing else what so ever.
      Certainly the Germans aren't currently prosecuting several of the managers at the time. /sarcasm
      Oh no wait, I have more sarcasm: Certainly they didn't force the company to spend $2bn on electric car R&D the results of which have already born some fruit. /sarcasm ... one more for good measure: Certainly there aren't several ongoing court cases which could end up costing VW more than $30bn by the time they are finished. /sarcasm

      Ok I'm done now.

  9. This is weird by kilodelta · · Score: 1

    Because it's not just Volkwagen who put software cheats into their car computers but Mercedes Benz and BMW too. Those latter two must have made sure their legislators were well bought off.

    1. Re: This is weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are forgetting a dozen or so others...

  10. \o/ by easyTree · · Score: 1

    Gotta love environmental regulations which serve to enable largish fines like this* but.... how does this help the citizens, whose health is nominally protected by this legislation?

    (*) equivalent to the penalty for downloading close to a hundred mp3s!!, but I digress...---^

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  11. Re:corporal punishment? by easyTree · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps if we start publicly caning the board of directors when a company is caught in egregious wrong doing

    ....we'll find a situation where the board of directors are paid scapegoats whilst the real board hides from view.

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  12. Doesn't seem like enough by SilverBlade2k · · Score: 1

    They should be forced to essentially 'buy' back ALL of the effected cars.

    Not at current value, but at the original value of the vehicle at the day of sale.

    Maybe a heavy loss of having to buy back all of those vehicles, and and then not being able to sell them ever, would be enough of a punishment.

  13. Re:corporal punishment? by datavirtue · · Score: 1

    Agreed. There is a lot of wishy-washy stuff going on with corporate boards. Sometimes they are just friends (rubber stamp) of the ceo/founder. Often they are just dysfunctional. The board actually does cause a lot of this shit because they are insulated from their own demands.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  14. End days for diesel by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

    There is only one way that the German auto industry will ever get a break from diesel scandals, and that is to stop making them. VW at least appears to be on the path to doing just that; the company is aggressively pushing forward with EV development and sales.

  15. Re: Crush VW by thundercattt · · Score: 1

    Funny GM was also accused of this. Sept under the rug though.