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Comment by JohnGB | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the same would have happened to an American company in the USA. If so, what's the deal with the bankers that did orders of magnitude more damage?

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It would be interesting to see the opposite too, an American GM or Ford executive being arrested in Europe.

I think it depends on whether they did anything illegal. Doing damage is not by itself enough to arrest anyone, there has to be something illegal about having acted in the way that caused the damage.

> I think it depends on whether they did anything illegal.

Less than you might think. Have you seen Three Felonies a Day[1] ? Or heard of "indict a ham sandwich"[2]?

The law being what it is today, and prosecutorial discretion being what it is, it is almost entirely up to whether someone wants to prosecute.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

[2] http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/indi...

Harley Davidson was caught doing the same emissions scam and no one seems to care. Granted there's less vehicles from them compared to the 11 million Volks but still.

Doesn't seem to be the same from what I can tell. AFAIK the Harley Davidson "defeat device" would still emit unacceptable levels of emissions during an emissions test. And that they were intended for track/racing use.

This is very different from purposefully hiding your emissions levels from testers.

Whether that difference is material when meting out punishment is up to judgement. But calling it "no different" seems pretty wrong.

I gotta do some searching but it was explained to me that at the factory they would run the engines extremely lean... like to the point they had to add additional cooling. Then when the bikes arrived at the dealer they would reflash the ECU and have it normally tuned again.

EDIT: Not exactly that... from another user "They admit that the modified bikes bypass emissions requirements, whereas the unmodified VWs didn't meet the requirements and had to cheat to pass inspection."

> had to cheat to pass inspection

What, VW bribed the comission? FBI should arrest them too..

???

Somebody created emission requirements for motorcycles?

Oh yes, and nobody cared about the performance aftermarket (basically anything you do is going to violate emissions standards) until Harley started selling bikes already modified for "racing".

I dropped 20 lbs off a 330lb bike (and added about 5hp) by replacing the heavy dual exhaust with a single Ti/carbon pipe, and reprogramming the ECU. I'm sure the manufacturer would have loved to give me a 310lb bike that made more power if they could. (and before you ask, no it's not loud, I hate loud pipes)

Incidentally, the exhaust/ECU upgrade was done by the local shop when the bike was purchased new. Basically the same as what H-D was doing.

Anyway, what H-D got popped for is arguably less egregious than what VW was doing. They admit that the modified bikes bypass emissions requirements, whereas the unmodified VWs didn't meet the requirements and had to cheat to pass inspection.

From the factory, the bikes passed the EPA requirements.

Harley also got into the business of selling folks new exhaust/air intake and race tuners at the dealership so folks could 'stage 1' their bikes and remap their EFI units. This results in failing emissions (usually). They settled, restricted what they sell post-sale and are tightening down on what voids factory warranties moving forward.

Funny, because Porsche designed some of the Harley engines (and has for awhile).

http://www.porscheengineering.com/peg/en/services/ourreferen...

You mean like Bernie Madoff, Raj Rajaratnam and Allen Stanford? Three of the most famous bankers / financiers of the last 20 years. Losing money isn't necessarily a crime, fraud is.

Your premise is a partial myth anyway.

"35 bankers were sent to prison for financial crisis crimes"

"There have been 59 bankers convicted of crimes"

http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/28/news/companies/bankers-priso...

The CEO of Enron, and Martha Stewart come to mind as other CEOs who have gone to prison for the actions.

Martha went to prison for securities fraud, not customer facing actions.

She went to prison for lying to the FBI during the investigation of her alleged securities fraud. IIRC she was never found to have committed securities fraud (though she very likely did).

Actually, she went to prison for lying to the FBI - which is pretty much impossible to avoid doing if you spend any amount of time talking to them.

Don't ever talk to federal investigators. That's your lawyer's job.

Why not plead the fifth?

That's absolutely what you should do until you talk to your lawyer and they advise you otherwise.

Do not "plead" anything. Do not mention the fifth amendment. There are rules there which neither of us knows.

Request a lawyer. That's it. Say nothing else.

Bankers are like aspect oriented programming. They cut through a lot of layers. You touch a banker you are touching many people across the spectrum. Sending an automobile scapegoat ceo to jail does not affect that many people.

The head regulator was the former CEO of the largest offender in the financial meltdown. The two were the ones making the deal. Those few that passed it into law were taking money from that company and the other offenders in form of campaign contributions. The result was a deal that only benefited the offenders while doing huge damage to their victims and many investors who placed bets on a market direction where they failed.

Textbook case of corruption. Probably one of the biggest and most obvious I've ever seen, too.

I don't recall any arrests related to GM's ignition lock fiasco.

Did GM deliberately try to falsify test results, so as to provide incorrect information to the government?

There's stupidity and incompetence, and then there's deliberately breaking the law and trying to hide that you're doing so. The latter gets you arrested, the former gets you shamed (and perhaps fined).

Yeah, GM's handling of the ignition switch was bad, but it was organizational (and some individual) incompetence, not conspiracy.

The bad switch was the responsibility of one engineer who simply didn't think it was a problem. Once it turned out it was, the switch was redesigned without changing the part number, which is really weird, but doesn't seem to have been part of any sort of coverup. It then took years for realization of the problem to percolate up far enough for the company as a whole to take action.

Did GM deliberately try to falsify test results, so as to provide incorrect information to the government?

Maybe. The Justice Department case against GM that was settled had two parts... a wire-fraud charge and a charge of "engaging in a scheme to conceal a deadly safety defect".

Of course, GM settled for $900 million (USD) with an agreement to drop the charges if GM fixes their recall process. So, we don't have a criminal conviction.

I do wonder if GM got off easy because they are American. Next to impossible to prove, lacking a smoking gun (email or similar), but GM actually killed people and got a small fine (relative to VW's fines).

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