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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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @02:24AM (1 child)
The U.S. passed laws that forced banks to make bad loans
That didn't happen.
You need to switch off the Reactionary (hate) radio.
It's filling your head with nonsense and rotting your brain.
What the law did was forbid red-lining.
Banksters now had to -consider- folks that they had previously excluded via acts of gross prejudice.
They were NOT required to GRANT a loan to anyone who did not pose a reasonable risk.
Due diligence still applied and someone doing his job properly would have weeded out the bad risks.
The thing is that the banks didn't hold those loans any longer that it took to bundle them and sell them to some sucker with excess wealth and no brains.
(Did you get stuck buying some of that junk? Is that why you're so irritated?)
The banksters who held onto the bad loans--which they knew from the start were crap--hedged their bets and bet against the crap loans and they didn't lose anything.
The "only" thing that suffered was the housing market and the national (and world) economy.
On top of that was robo-signing of foreclosure documents, in violation of federal law.
(By not actually knowing what the law is, local cops and courts were complicit in this.)
Trump has a criminal in his cabinet [google.com] who got rich doing this stuff.
Yeah, a big part of the problem came from USA.gov making the buyers of the bundles whole again--actually, beyond whole--rather than letting them eat their bad gambling debts.
...and, of course, Dubya's and O'Bummer's DoJ not sending the fraudsters to prison, or putting them on trial, or even charging them.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 12 2017, @03:17AM
You mean... like pension fund managers naive enough to believe credit rating agencies which used to be reliable in the past?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford