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posted by mrpg on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the jail-the-suits-now dept.

Reuters reports:

Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) pleaded guilty on Friday to fraud, obstruction of justice and falsifying statements as part of a $4.3 billion settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department in January over the automaker's diesel emissions scandal.

It was the first time the company has pleaded guilty to criminal conduct in any court in the world.

[...] The September 2015 disclosure that VW intentionally cheated on emissions tests for at least six years led to the ouster of its chief executive, damaged the company's reputation around the world, and prompted massive bills.

In total, VW has agreed to spend up to $25 billion in the United States to address claims from owners, environmental regulators, states, and dealers, and offered to buy back about 500,000 polluting U.S. vehicles.

Volkswagen's general counsel Manfred Doess made the plea on its behalf after he said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit that he was authorized by the company's board of directors to enter a guilty plea.

[...] U.S. District Judge Sean Cox accepted the company's guilty plea to conspiracy to commit fraud, obstruction and entry of goods by false statement charges and set an April 21 sentencing date, where he must decide whether to approve the terms of the plea agreement.

Common Dreams reports:

U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of researchers, advocates, organizers, and students in state capitols across the country, we take on the special interests on issues, such as product safety, political corruption, prescription drugs, and voting rights, where these interests stand in the way of reform and progress.

Statement by Mike Litt, Consumer Program Advocate at U.S. PIRG Education Fund, on today's guilty plea by Volkswagen in its criminal court case for emission violations:

"18 months after news of Volkswagen's emission scandal broke, we're glad to see the company finally admit to criminal wrongdoing. This kind of company admission is a big deal.

Next, executives responsible for defrauding consumers and government regulators should pay with jail time. The VW scandal is one of the biggest corporate crimes in history. We need to make sure executives and their companies know that crime doesn't pay.

The story so far.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:52PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:52PM (#477868)

    This amounts to $5000 per vehicle unless I miscalculated. It may benefit the owners but falls far short of the damage to the ecosystem.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:58PM (#477869)

    You have no idea how much the 'ecosystem' was damaged, if at all.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday March 12 2017, @12:17AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 12 2017, @12:17AM (#477891) Journal

      You have no idea how much the 'ecosystem' was damaged, if at all.

      Hint: a lot less than the use of Agent Orange. And did the USians stopped using it after Vietnam?
      No, history shows they are still using it, this time they even outsourced his production to Russia! What's the weirdest: these crazy USians chose to use him on themselves!

      (grin)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:11PM (#478027)

    falls far short of the damage to the ecosystem.

    Not really, you can point-source-ify it and figure out the delta of hydrocarbons dumped in the air compared to a competitors auto, then use all the EPA rules and crap to figure out the damage.

    Don't forget to credit VW with not damaging the environment by manufacturing elaborate emissions control hardware. It won't balance all the way but maybe somewhere from 10% to 50% of total damage can credit right back.

    I have a toyota commuter car thats rated at 36 mpg. Because its a toyota it'll last 200K miles at least, assuming I don't crash it etc etc. That's 5555 gallons of gas. If Toyota had lied and thats 35 mpg which about the scale of this "scandal" that would be 5714 gallons of gas. 5714 - 5555 = 159 gallons of gas.

    In 2013 the mayflower oil pipeline spill according to wikipedia anyway, dumped 134000 gallons of oil and the government punishment was $5.07M which is about $37.83 per gallon of oil.

    At that charge rate $5000 is equivalent to 132 gallons of gas. Eh, its not unreasonable.

    Most people don't care about fuel efficiency and are happy burning 10 MPG instead of my car. In that way the damage is extremely abstract in that they thought and socially signalled they were greener than me, but they're actually burning gas like a midsize sedan. Then again midsize sedan buyers don't care that they're "wasting" fossil fuels, so in reality there's not really any loss at all.

    Most cars get crashed or scrapped before 200K miles.

    Overall its probably a fair amount of money.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:41PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:41PM (#478037) Journal
      There are several things to note here. First, the EPA has a strong conflict of interest, both due to its funded purpose and due to the Obama administration for exaggerating the impact of pollution. Nor have the pollution regulations in question been demonstrated to be beneficial to follow. As I understand it, the key harm of increased emissions is supposed to be higher numbers of cases of respiratory illnesses in urban populations, particularly due to asthma. But other things, such as an overly clean environment and/or indoor air pollution (yes, you can have both) can be causing that.

      Second, VW compliance with EPA regulations worsens the fuel economy and performance of its vehicle. This trade off has been outright ignored. Third, the pipeline spill you mentioned was fined for reasons that had nothing to do with the harm of the spill and it is apples and oranges to compare oil spilled into the environment to oil burned into mostly CO2 and H2O and then released into the environment. Fourth, VW is only being fined because it got caught by an independent party. EPA had no trouble with the violation when it was invisible to the public.

      VW's violation has been turned into theater, but we have little evidence of significant harm to the environment or people, the violation meant significant benefit to VW drivers, and regulators were suspiciously lax on looking for violations of the law in the first place. I believe this to be a terrible precedent for either punishing polluters or any sort of business regulatory reform.