German Court Sends VW Execs To Prison Over Dieselgate Scandal (apnews.com) 78
A German court has sentenced two former Volkswagen executives to prison and handed suspended sentences to two others for their roles in the Dieselgate emissions scandal, marking the conclusion of a nearly four-year fraud trial. Politico reports: The former head of diesel development was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, and the head of drive train electronics to two years and seven months by the court in Braunschweig, German news agency dpa reported. Two others received suspended sentences of 15 months and 10 months. The scandal began in September 2015 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation. saying that the company had rigged engine control software that let the cars pass emissions tests while they emitted far more pollution in actual driving.
The company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation to vehicle owners. Two VW managers received prison sentence in the U.S. The former head of the company's Audi division, Rupert Stadler, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.25 million). The sentence is still subject to appeal. Missing from the trial, which lasted almost four years, was former CEO Martin Winterkorn. Proceedings against him have been suspended because of health issues, and it's not clear when he might go on trial. Winterkorn has denied wrongdoing. Further proceedings are open against 31 other suspects in Germany.
The company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation to vehicle owners. Two VW managers received prison sentence in the U.S. The former head of the company's Audi division, Rupert Stadler, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.25 million). The sentence is still subject to appeal. Missing from the trial, which lasted almost four years, was former CEO Martin Winterkorn. Proceedings against him have been suspended because of health issues, and it's not clear when he might go on trial. Winterkorn has denied wrongdoing. Further proceedings are open against 31 other suspects in Germany.
Re:They deserve life in prison (Score:5, Interesting)
You're confusing justice and revenge. It's not about what you think they deserve, it's about how to protect society. Sending this kind of people to jail 4.5 years has high likeliness of preventing repetition of their crime. By contrary, violent criminals are more likely to repeat murder if they exit, which is why we hold them in jail until they're old enough to not be a danger. Death penalty is nearly ever necessary to protect society.
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Except lying with practically every single word, like putting blame on Zelenskyy for starting the war in Ukraine?
And defrauding students with his failed and shady "Trump University"?
And protecting US adversaries like Putin's regime, while putting tarrifs on US allies and threatening some of them with annexation?
And repeatedly mocking veterans as "losers" while never serving himself, while abusing every veterans rememberance day as a political stunt to bash political opponents?
And profiteering from his Trump
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Found guilty by a jury by his peers. Can't get any more fair or democratic than that.
Re: Good, Germany. (Score:3)
I would accept Elon Musk. He inflated the milage of Teslas to avoid warranty repairs. He calculated milage based on battery usage instead of how many times the tire rotated. https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
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A few fall guys.
They took years off people's lives. People died early. People will die early. All thanks to inhaling toxins that were illegally released. All for profit. All widespread. Worse than a bank robbery that gets people killed.
Re:They deserve life in prison (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than that, EU regulators were well aware that this was happening long before the shit hit the fan.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Basically, the action on the part of the US EPA forced the hand of the EU commission as they could no longer simply look the other way as they knowingly had been doing. You'll never see them hold themselves accountable. It's as you said: Just a few fall guys.
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It's always a mix of incompetence and evil.
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Yes, and it was widespread in the industry to do this, as well.
More than one company was caught after this doing the same thing, but we never had of any other prosecutions because ?
VW was the fallguy for the entire industry, so they ALL didn't have to pay.
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Chrysler/Stellantis/whatever got in trouble too, at least in the US. No jail time last I checked, though. A bullet is too good for mass polluters. Should be dropped into vats of their pollutants. Suffocated with diesel exhaust.
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Could your prove this in a court of law....?
I kinda doubt it....
4+ years for tweaking software is WAY overblown for the "crime"...geez.
They let murderers and rapists off these days with less than that....
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It's not software. It's mass murder. 480 million people with COPD across the world. How many of them lost years or productive, happy lives thanks to the software change? A rather large lot I suspect.
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And just how would you prove in a court of law any cases of death were due to this software "cheat"?
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Along these lines. There are other studies.
https://academic.oup.com/restu... [oup.com]
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Both of my parents died of COPD, but I blame the cigarettes.
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That sucks, man.
So we've got pretty solid evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand it would be child's Play to simply seize all of their money and property and then bar them from ever being in a position of leadership again as a condition of parole. That would prevent these men from reoffending.
Now when it comes to viole
Re:So we've got pretty solid evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
That the threat of long jail sentences does not deter a crime. You've got Google so I'm not going to do the googling for you but you can easily find the studies and they are quite accurate and quite repeatable in all countries they have been
done.
It's not the length of the sentence: it's the certainty of being punished that motivates people.
It's neither (Score:2)
If you have a problem with that you have a problem with reality. You can make all the excuses you want but they don't change reality.
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https://scholarlycommons.law.n... [northwestern.edu]
However, we find a consistent, moderate effect for
certainty of punishment acting to reduce crime
rates.
https://criminology.fsu.edu/ne... [fsu.edu]
Mears added: âoeAnother example is certainty of punishment. Policy has almost exclusively focused on creating tougher punishments, which has led to substantial investments in prisons. But, for a number of reasons, greater certainty of punishment may do more to deter crime.â
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/art... [ojp.gov]
1. The certainty of being
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I appreciate your well-reasoned, thoughtful commentary.
But I don't think things need to be that complicated. We have almost 7 billion people on the planet. We don't need dirtbags living amongst us, depriving others of resources. I think it is as simple as this: get caught engaging in illegal dirtbag activity of serious magnitude and your life is forfeit. Period.
It's not about revenge, or punishment, or rehabilitation, or even deterrence. It's simply a matter of society not needing to waste resources on th
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You've got to remember what he considers to be an "advanced civilization." Think post-collectivization Russia -- he advocates for exactly that in his posts all the time, even though he's likely unaware of it, namely because he has these incredibly distorted views of history and rarely has any idea of what actually happened. For example, he actually believes that every war that was global in scope was over labor disputes, including the Seven Year's war, the Napoleonic wars, the Great War, and World War II. A
Re:So we've got pretty solid evidence (Score:4, Informative)
Well, in this case rsilvergun is actually right about long prison sentences not deterring crime.
Well, that's the "short" simplified headline, at least.
The more correct statement would be that the deterrence effect of long sentences is minimal compared to the other factors.
It's basically a triangle:
Certainty of punishment: The more certain they are to get caught, the more effect it has.
Immediacy of punishment: The faster the punishment takes place, the more effect it has.
Severity of punishment: The harsher the punishment, the more effect. At least in theory.
What research has shown is that that certainty and immediacy beat severity every single time.
Even the NIJ [ojp.gov] agrees:
1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.
2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.
3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.
4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.
5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.
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If you've seen someone dying of lung cancer, you might reconsider what you call "violence".
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Lost my grandmother to lung cancer that metastasized to the brain. There is some urge towards violence, yes.
I did (Score:2)
You're missing the point. There is no purpose to putting someone in prison if we can stop them from committing further crimes. The reason violent people get put in prison is we can't stop them from committing further crimes.
We can easily stop a cigarette CEO from committing more crime just by taking away all their money and power. Then you just don't let them have any power and you let them have only enough money that they can
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A recent study estimated that 16,000 people died due to these emissions in the UK alone. 30k more with damaged health.
VW has not paid out enough for this. It is almost impossible to identify who was killed or injured by their emissions, but the UK didn't fine them heavily enough either.
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Considering the health risks of diesel emissions, one could probably argue there isn't a murderer on death row that has caused as many deaths as these people. It was willfull, malicious and with intent. Just because they were suits and work in a glass tower doesn't magically make them something other than what they really are: murderers.
Re:They deserve life in prison (Score:4, Insightful)
You're confusing justice and revenge. It's not about what you think they deserve, it's about how to protect society.
I don't think either of those are what's happening here.
What of the European regulators, who looked the other way when they realized what was going on? While Internet Europeans (including here on slashdot) were going on about how much more enlightened Europe was than America because the former used diesel, which they claimed to be better on the environment, many within the EU member states knew full well otherwise, which wasn't revealed until the US EPA did routine compliance testing and ended up forcing VW to buy back every affected car they sold in addition to some tens of billions of dollars in fines.
At the time (and it was STILL this way until I think last year) it was legal to cheat on diesel emissions reporting in Europe so long as it was done to "protect the engine" so literally every automaker selling diesel vehicles there was doing it, including non-European automakers. (A very rare, highly cited wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] note in particular the chart of what the standard says is much lower than the actual numbers) Volkswagens crime, apparently, was only in terms of a vague severity of it, which vastly exceeded what other automakers had already done (and had been slapped for in the US, but not Europe.) Also, the penalties and restitution Volkswagen saw in Europe were tiny compared to the US, go figure.
So I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that in Europe you can ex-post-facto hold people criminally liable, or the fact that EU member state governments don't even want to hold themselves accountable to their own policies, which carries the odor of scapegoating, rather than either revenge or justice. Though much of Europe being high-context culturally, has the "it's not what we said, but what we meant, and you're expected to read our minds" mentality, so this is normal to them, I guess, likely meaning the people who determine "what we meant" are immune from prosecution even though it turns out it was pretty fucking blatant.
Death penalty is nearly ever necessary to protect society.
Some people murder while they're inside a prison. But solitary confinement is also considered cruel and unusual in some jurisdictions. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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It needs to not free people who will offend again.
Unfortunately, this requires psychology to become a science.
And psychologists don't seem to care about making psychology a science.
Until it is, people will keep getting robbed, raped and murdered by offenders we should have kept in jail.
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eh, no.
I'm all for prison sentences for CEO/Board/Management who "knew about it and did nothing", there are in fact many American companies that should have their board members and management thrown in jail for lesser crimes. For example Ebay and Amazon execs for knowingly allowing low quality junk, eg dropship/temu/wish.com/shein garbage to even be on their sites. They know this stuff is dangerous, toxic or harmful, and do nothing.
But there is a line to be drawn between "crimes done to make money, should b
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>When it comes to dieselgate the customers were deceived, the governments were deceived,
And people died. More people died than otherwise would have due to the increased emissions. They actively killed people with their choices.
See? Here is how slimy and slithery this slope is. You argue that it's just financial, when clearly it's not. They all will do the same.
So, having jail time for a lot of these crimes is a good option
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The problem is, if you adopt those standards, how do you prove culpability? Under those standards a legitimate defense would be that they didn't believe it would do any harm.
Laws should be written so that it's easy (at least in principle) to prove that they were broken. So they can't be based on people's motives. Even determining the sentence based of motives is opening the door to liars and slippery evidence.
Re: They deserve life in prison (Score:3)
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Please keep your American ides of a revenge system to yourselves over there. In civilised society we don't actually call for the death penalty for anything, much less a fraud claim that can be addressed by blocking people from holding positions of relevance in companies.
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They deserve some time in prison, and I am surprised that they actually got it. This should be a reminder to managers that poisoning the environment is not a victimless crime, and you are not getting away with it.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time we see execs getting held accountable.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about time we see execs getting held accountable.
Too bad for them they didn't get convicted in the U.S. at this time, they'd probably get pardoned. /cynical
And it would have only cost their moms $1M in $TRUMP coin: Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mom Attended $1M Mar-a-Lago Dinner [thedailybeast.com]
Florida healthcare executive Paul Walczak, who admitted to stealing money earmarked for his employees’ taxes to fund an extravagant lifestyle, received a full and unconditional pardon from Trump on April 25.
His release from prison came three weeks after his Republican donor mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a $1 million-per-head fundraising dinner, which promised face-to-face access to Trump at his South Florida club.
The pardon spared Walczak from prison time, as he had yet to report to his 18-month sentence. It also meant he would not have to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution.
Maybe he'll find a good use for that $4.4M he now won't have to pay in restitution ... /s
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Too bad for them they didn't get convicted in the U.S. at this time, they'd probably get pardoned. /cynical
That's an interesting theory considering...well... Stateside they were slapped with some $25 billion worth of fines for emissions alone, plus some additional to the FTC for false advertising, many of their executives went to jail rather than just two, and they were forced to buy back every affected vehicle, effectively adding billions more in restitution. I think in the EU they saw about $1.6 billion worth of fines, likely millions at best for restitution in the form of minor recalls, and these two executiv
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Weren't those fines to the company rather than to the individual executives?
"compensation to vehicle owners" (Score:2)
It's not vehicle owners they should be compensating, it's all the pedestrians who were ever passed by one of their cars.
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And the other manufacturers who obeyed the rules (I assume there are some ;-) ) and hence lost sales due to being less competitive.
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seems excessive (Score:2, Informative)
Re:seems excessive (Score:4, Informative)
Re:seems excessive (Score:4, Interesting)
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I know what that would do to my morale.
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They may have just been following orders. Okay Nazi jokes aside, as an engineer myself I don't pretend that our profession is some bastion of ethical excellence. Engineering is a big field with lots of people, some good, some bad. Some upstanding citizens, some murderers. Some would question their superiors decision to do this, others are company men who wouldn't have a second thought about cheating a regulation. Some are passionate about building something great, others are there for a paycheck and can't w
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For the lawful good aligned, then the correct approach is to try to fix the problem within the company, then whistleblow to a regulatory agency only after that fails.
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Re:seems excessive (Score:5, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, they were doing actual driving while comparing the actual measured tailpipe emissions, which was effectively off-script from their normal test that they published at the time. The numbers were some 40 times the limit. They then asked VW what was going on, which VW then blamed on a software bug, so they provided a "fix" that just tried to make the algorithm more clever about how it detected when an emissions test was happening. Needless to say, this test effectively was what actual driving conditions would look like, so their "fix" didn't work, instead revealing an obvious pattern shift.
Ever since then, the EPA no longer reveals how it does the tests. Most people don't know this, and some will even deny it because they're anti-US, but the EPA actually has the toughest emissions standards in the world. Possibly a contributor to the fact that most European countries are more polluted than the US:
https://www.iqair.com/us/world... [iqair.com]
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Most people don't know this, and some will even deny it because they're anti-US, but the EPA actually has the toughest emissions standards in the world.
Not for much longer. ;(
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Germany doesn't mess around (Score:2)
I'm gonna have to defer to a line from Harry Potter that sums up my feelings on this quite accurately:
"You're a little scary sometimes...brilliant, but scary."
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While I'll admit that I'm a bit of a Germaphobe, VW got a slap on the wrist there compared to what happened here in the US.
Now do Boeing (Score:2)
https://behindtheblack.com/beh... [behindtheblack.com]
Hopefully they don't avoid another trial.
Concentration Camp (Score:1)
I guess prison is SORT OF like a concentration camp, just not as severe.
But Germany has dispossessed and sent people to concentration camps for activity far more benign than what these guys did.
If Germany isn't going to send them to a concentration camp, they should at least be dispossessed.
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A country is a piece of land. Germany did not do send people to concentration camps - the people running it did.
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The people sent to the camps probably don't care much for semantics.
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"Germany" is short hand for the government of Germany. Like we say the United States bombed Syria - we don't mean the piece of land did it.
Re: Concentration Camp (Score:2)
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It is not.
By the very definition a concentration camp involves concentrating people on some ethic, religious, etc basis without fair trials or hearing. German prisons are nothing like that.
The reconcentrados in Cuba, restricted by the Spanish.
The American Indians in the US forced into reservations.
Those of Japanese heritage in the US forced into internment camps.
The Jewish people (and Romas and so on) forced into death camps by Germany.
Palestinians herded into camps by the Israeli government.
Uyghurs sent to
Great! More execs in prison please (Score:1)
And confiscate their property.
Make some room for the board of Thames Water [bbc.co.uk]
Winterkorn is safe (Score:2)
He'll just do a 'Beckenbauer', can't be sentenced, my heart, y'know.
In America (Score:2)
Great (Score:2)
Now that it's all over, can I have my performance mods back?
This would never happen in America (Score:2)
Gol-dern overreachin' nanny state