Those billions are because of the USA. In the EU, it was merely a slap in the hand.

Annual revenue of VW at the time was 217B €. In the EU, they paid 1.5B €. So, 0.7% of their annual revenue for a scheme that went on for years.

Granted, in the US, they actually did persecute VW properly, and they ended up paying close to 30B $. A much proper sum.

As for the jail time, they arrested 2 from middle management in the EU. No member from the board or the CEO went to jail here.

Is that what we call justice now? Specially when we want to pretend we are superior to the USA in that regard?

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ffsm8 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The crime was committed in the USA.

You are expecting third party countries to begin litigation on crimes that happen outside of their borders - even if they're not even strictly illegal where they're headquartered?

That shit never happens, and if it would, you'd first have to start jailing lots of S&P CEOs for the companies crimes that are committed in other countries and never amount to anything, precisely for the same reason.

Like literally every company thats involved in any mining, drilling etc. They always don't adhere to local environmental regulations etc

	▲	wtcactus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The crime was committed in the USA. What? No, you are completely wrong. The crime was committed in many places. In the USA, but also in several EU countries (Germany included). In fact, the numbers were more than 10x higher in the EU (since we use a lot more diesel cars) than what they were in the USA. 600 000 vehicles were affected in the USA, while 8.5 million vehicles were affected in the EU. USA courts, effectively, issued a fine more than 200x higher per vehicle affected, than what we did in the EU. No one that actually followed the news (and isn't German and therefore completely biased) will say with a straight face that EU justice system didn't favor VW due to established interests. The German government obviously manipulated the judicial system all over Europe to let the case go away. It also says a lot, that it had to be the Americans bringing the case to light. A lot of people probably knew, but the control that the Germans had (and still have) over European economy and judicial systems didn't allow anyone inside the EU to speak up. No justice was made over here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal