VW engineering executive sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case
reuters.com
reuters.com
EDIT: FTA
> U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far.
> Another VW executive, Oliver Schmidt, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in Detroit on Dec. 6. Under a plea agreement, Schmidt could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violating clean air laws.
Yes, they will, but Germany will not extradite them. They already made that clear. And it is very unlikely that the german court system will prosecute them. Haven't heard anything yet, because this might inflict the politicians who backed this Diesel emission testing system for decades. They didn't even go to the technical root yet.
Only one made the mistake to go for his holidays to Florida, so he was caught.
Article 7
EXTRADITION OF NATIONALS
(1) Neither of the Contracting Parties shall be bound to extradite its own nationals. The competent executive authority of the Requested State, however, shall have the power to grant the extradition of its own nationals if, in its discretion, this is deemed proper to do and provided the law of the Requested State does not so preclude.
In fact, Germany has quite a few outstanding arrest warrants against US citizens, too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/31/usa.germany
I certainly do not approve of the scam and deception VW did (and possibly other automobile manufacturers?), but I think I do not approve extraditing citizens of your own country for some non-capital crime. Or even some capital crimes for that matter. I (and most of the other Germans and EU citizens [1]) oppose death penalties. So extraditing someone to the US, which could result in death penalty if someone committed a murder, would be a really big ethical and/or diplomatic issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/british-trad...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three
The US doesn't always gets what it wants, for example with Gary McKinnon: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138
To have to navigate the juridicial system in another country is a huge disadvantage. You will make errors which a native will never make. You will not know about options that are very clear to long term citizens. Etc. Etc.
All in all, whatever the crime, you would like to have everybody the same chance in your juridicial system. Foreigners will have a disadvantage however.
All of that is the lawyers' job, not the defendant's, and these guys will be able to hire very good local lawyers.
No judicial system composed of humans can ever be perfectly fair and free of bias, but that doesn't mean we should let criminals go free.
(0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technischer_Überwachungsverein
(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgasuntersuchung (non english WP link, basically it means "emission checking")
Edit:
VW sold approximately 475000 affected diesel vehicles in the US (compared to approx. 84.5 million car sales in the same time period).
Now, yes worldwide 100,000's of people die every year from air pollution but simply giving up is a poor solution. Further, you can't make getting caught have similar penalties vs. cheating or you promote cheating as having zero downsides.
And while this hasn't been public knowledge, it is not that surprising, because it has been public knowledge how much the mileage tests are gamed, so it's not surprising that all other tests are gamed as well (and, specifically, using defeat devices is also illegal).
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/24/16021292/german-car-compa...
>any sudden punishment of violators from outside reeks of market protection.
Perhaps it's because the EU lacks the authority of the member states to regulate & police emission laws. They started legal proceedings against their member states precisely because of their inaction.
"The European Commission on Thursday began the so-called "infringement procedures," calling Germany, Britain, Spain and Luxembourg to account for not imposing the same kind of penalties Volkswagen faced in the United States for using illegal software to mask health-harming emissions."[2]
Isn't that market protection as well?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/business/international/co...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
[2]: http://www.dw.com/en/eu-launches-legal-case-against-germany-...
And yes, when emissions testing switched to relying on the OBD codes, all was lost. Even I thought about hacking the ECU to report "all good"
http://www.autonews.com/article/20160307/OEM11/303079956/aft...
There's an exception for other member states of the European Union, but that's it.
So when the problem with the overly large AdBlue tanks came up, the Europeans knew they can cheat that away, because legally they thought they can get away with it. The engine test passed legally, and there was no legal framework to protect actual sold cars from emitting too much NOx. This is of course entirely the fault of the politicians, which were of course lobbied into that, and didn't ask much. That's why VW insisted all the time that they acted legally in Europe. In the US of course not, because in the US the big three always had the advantage of special drivers to pass the emission tests. So they still don't fear any legal woes in Europe.
So the strategy is to keep calm, and protect the rest of the industry, the politicians, the workers, change the ECU's, and either add bigger tanks or change AdBlue more often. It's insane to ask for 2 years AdBlue storage anyway. 6 months if enough. And the good engines can pass the new EURO 6 limits, because their injection system is highly optimized. Those engines are miles better and more effective than a normal otto, which enables them to actually use the crap diesel oil. Problematic are only the overly large engines or the cheap ones.
Germany is cool that its citizens conducted international fraud at a scale the world has never seen?
Is has become so common that it is a tell that the person using this justification is deeply partisan or otherwise zealous in some manner or another.
[1]:http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/ex-vw-chef...
> You’re in the top 0.007% richest people in the world by income.
> That makes you the 428,441st richest person on earth by income.
I'm really disappointed with Germany on this one, but it makes sense since VAG were buddy buddies with Merkel & co. since time immemorial (makes sense since it's a powerful force for the economy, still despicable).
If you kill a couple of people you go to jail or might even get executed. If you kill 1200+ you get early retired on a comfy stipend.
This falsely looks like a good point.
Cars kill a lot of people by virtue of accidents. Does that mean cars are a bad thing? You see, just because something inevitably kills people in practice it isn't automatically a bad thing. What you need to balance it with is the good it brings compared to the alternatives.
Your point makes a comparison between killing a couple of people for no good and the effect of cars and their exhaust.
Your point is bad.
"U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far.
Another VW executive, Oliver Schmidt, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in Detroit on Dec. 6. Under a plea agreement, Schmidt could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violating clean air laws."
Shamefully, I stayed silent as I watched my colleagues lie through their teeth to the customer: claiming, for example, that a range of functions were already mature and in series production when in reality they were little more than vapourware at that point. I have worked for enough startups to understand the concept of "fake it 'till you make it" -- but there are limits. In particular, the organisation needs to be prepared to follow through and make good on promises made -- or come clean when it becomes apparent that something cannot be done.
One needs to be especially careful when we are dealing with safety-involved automotive autonomy functionality where the consequences of hastily engineered and inadequately tested algorithms can sometimes be serious. I can well remember getting the distinct impression that the engineering team for these early products were essentially being set up as "fall guys" -- we took tremendous risks to win that early business, but it was clear that we would be very much isolated and alone when or if any of the potential downsides were realised.
I worked for a guy like that. When I finally decided to call it quits he got physical (chased me through the company premises with an iron bar, not kidding).
Nowadays I would tell someone like that to fuck off at the first sign of such behavior, when I was young I could still be bullied.
The frustrating part of all this is that I did some of my best work for this asshole, simply because he'd promise the impossible to the customers and would then rely on me to get his ass out of the fire, which I inevitably found a way to do. Even so, it wore me out to the point where I had serious physical side effects from the stress and it messed up a lot of my private relationships.
After that I took it easy and ran a start-up of my own. It seemed like a vacation in comparison and only became stressful when it took off in a manner that we had never foreseen. Still, the stress levels never even approached what happened in those few years at that earlier company.
I think sometimes about this relationship between assholes and engineers. On one hand it's entirely manipulative and destructive to the engineer on multiple levels. On the other hand it has a track record of leading to achievements engineers probably wouldn't even attempt otherwise (or of the task actually being impossible).
But looking at the positive outcomes, how do we get those achievements without assholes exploiting engineers? The sort of achievements that a reasonable engineer wouldn't even attempt because the demands seem unrealistic?
The biggest sources of pressure were offsite and in another country, which made "managing up" a very fiddly and tricky proposition.
We did have some problematic leadership on-site though. Our sales director, formerly a sidekick for the UK's equivalent of Donald Trump, and who had exactly the sort of relationship with the truth as you might expect, was responsible for much of the misinformation that made the situation difficult in the first place. A big chunk of the pressure was in order to make good on the lies that he had told - that sort of dishonest leadership can have insidious, widespread and lasting harmful effects.
He did try overt bullying with me once, but I was able to pull him aside after the meeting where he had tried to single me out and told him that he should either fire me or back off and let me do my job rather than trying to humiliate me in front of my peers. He backed off, at least overtly, but continued trying to undermine the authority of everybody around him. Eventually he got kicked out (after a conflict with another more experienced manager lead to mediation and all sorts of protracted HR stuff).
Another manager (the one who turned green) I had a lot more respect for. Even so, she tipped the scales of some key technical decisions by sending stakeholders overseas on a wild-goose chase at short notice so she could stuff the relevant meeting with people who would support the decision that she wanted. A dirty trick, and very hard to counter from hundreds of miles away.
My proudest moment was when I gently reminded one of our project managers of his ethical responsibilities -- that as a professional he had a duty to protect our customers as much as a duty to serve his employer. I feel that that was an inflection point in our relationship with one of our customers -- which until that time had been characterised primarily by deceit and dissembling, and which subsequently became incrementally more open and honest.
That whole period was not good for my health or for my marriage. I was away from home from 6am 'tll 11pm most days, and away in Germany on the occasional wild-goose-chase for weeks at a time -- leaving my wife alone to juggle her own full time job, and look after our two small children. (I was a terrible husband and father for sticking with that job for as long as I did, and I am tremendously lucky and privileged that she stuck with me through that period).
Anyway, I am very happy to be out of that particular corner of the automotive industry and now working for a company that could not be more different and more supportive.
I view FITYMI as more as a positive confidence building and projecting practice. When it goes on to deception, either self-deception or deceiving employees, partners, customers or investors it's corrosively bad.
Sure, lying to one customer might get you a deal, but then you have to perform on that deal. And maybe you do, this time. But that just sucks you into doing it again and again and over time your organization is going to get known as liars who can't meet commitments.
I love engineers. Though that said, that does sound like a very harsh situation to be in.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-09/veteran-v...
Also, I don't believe any VW executives have ever been charged in Germany.
So: if it was that easy to fix legally why did they cheat in the first place??
Of course it can't be that easy. So of course my car is still polluting over the limit. And I think this is a story that isn't getting the coverage it needs. A proper fix for my car would have been to install an AdBlue system into it, at great cost. Had they been forced to do that - or buy back the car - they would be in serious financial trouble.
That also answers why the German government is giving them some leeway here: it's not exactly in their interest to kill Volkswagen.
While the federal government does not have a direct stake (apart from all the tax euros), the fine state of Lower Saxony holds a 20 % share (which actually causes the MP and his economics minister to always be on the board of directors).
I believe it's now a middle ground: cars lost "only" about 5-10% performance/fuel eco, and they are still only half way to the NOx limit.
Your car did take a performance hit and fuel economy hit. Not a big one, but enough to make it less competitive during instrumented tests by journalists. Tests are showing about 5-6% fuel economy hit which is not trivial, and also engine performance hit in higher RPM band.
Luckily, most car buyers don't push their cars enough to notice.
if (emissions_test_running()) {
run_efficiently();
} else {
business_as_usual();
}
run_efficiently();So you can make the engine run at high temp, do 5L/100km and output 200hp, but with lots of NOx produced
Or you can run it cooler, with less NOx produced, but then it does 6L/100km and ouputs 175hp (say)
So basically the bad code was
if (under test)
run_cool_inefficient_lowNOx
else
run_hot_efficient_highNOx
This was made worse by EU regulations that focused 100% on CO2 - which is proportional to consumption only.
In order to sell cars in the EU they needed models that stayed under 120g/km CO2 (say 5L/100km) and of course they couldn't be lower power than the competition, and to stay under price limits for company purchases they needed models that stayed under the price limit where they could fit AdBlue systems
However, legally the cars are only required to meet emissions limits in test conditions, and the rules allow for emissions control devices to be disabled if necessary "to protect the engine". So it's not clear if any laws were broken by Volkswagen's use of a defeat device.
If there are to be any successful lawsuits against VW over the emissions scandal in the EU, they will likely relate to consumer law - i.e. that VW's cars were deceptively sold as being clean when they were not, and people's vehicles lost value due to VW's actions when the emissions problems became known.
Has that been proven? Serious question, I've not kept up with the ins and outs of the case.
UPDATE: I should clarify, I mean specifically the increased pollution these VWs created not just pollution in general.
As it stands, I think it's a bit misleading
While I approve of strict punishments for such terrible actions, I worry that this is a case of a "scapegoat" being advertised as punished, so that the real decision makers higher up can go with lighter reprimands. Since the scapegoat is guilty of the crime, the deception is much easier.
I called management out on it, said that I did not want to wind up like a "rogue engineer" at VW when the shit hits the fan, because I felt our upper management would gladly throw us all under the bus. "Don't worry, this is all perfectly legal within the contracts". They didn't understand the difference between "this is illegal" and "this is unethical".
I quit the company. I won't put loyalty to a company head of ethics, morals.
These VW engineers? Maybe the executives were the big fish who made the call, but they were the ones who agreed to make it happen. They are just as liable, in my view.
(I hear the project was eventually canned. The users who were beta tested on it immediately realized what was happening and threatened to quit.)
Based on what I've read about him, it seemed like he was more than eager to deceive regulators. He had many opportunities to come clean and avoid this and instead he chose to toe the company line.
> that the defense of superior orders was no longer considered enough to escape punishment; but merely enough to lessen punishment
Losing a job is not an excuse to do illegal tasks, especially when you have a senior well payed job and are not exactly scraping by.
In some cases you might even be required to report such illegal requests to some authority.
That's absurdly naive of the laws. At this level of management and up, these requests are not passed along in a traceable, litigable form, unless you have spectacularly unaware executives performing the demands. Look how far out of hand it had to get at Wells Fargo before there was action, and how long it took at VW before there was any sort of action.
Also, anyone with mediocre Internet searching skills can see the egregiously poor track record of whistleblowers' treatment everywhere. Unless you already are set up with your FU money, you'll die of starvation before seeing any justice in most cases.
Legislators and prosecutors need lessons in how these policies are enacted and implemented in the real world to actually catch this form of malfeasance. They need to catch the equivalent of Frank Abagnale who performs these kinds of misdeeds, gets caught, and teaches law enforcement and legislators how to actually nab others like him. Until then, they're just blind pigs accidentally stumbling upon truffles while going to take a piss.
Is it? The report triggers the investigation, which can then compel the reporter to provide those lessons. It doesn't have to end at the report. Of course, knowing that, the person is less likely to report - which is why these laws exist.
It doesn't work like that in the real world. These laws only nab the lower-rung staff in the unfortunate position of unavoidably leaving tracks while implementing the directives from higher management. Directives are given in abstracted form, and clarifications are passed out in untraceable means, typically verbal conversations, and even then the clarification is very rarely spelled out in black and white, and more often expressed as a gruff "do whatever it takes" command.
A soft, low-level form of how this plays out in the US that many can relate to: salaried employees officially are supposed to only work 40 hours a week. It is commonplace for many organizations to abuse that, but nowhere in official, litigable forms will you ever see a manager telling an employee they must work more than 40 hours.
Finally, above a certain level, employees who try to play CYA games with emails and/or written letters will find themselves frozen out by management. It isn't like this everywhere, but it is common enough that I see it happen in some of my client accounts where I consult at; fortunately, I'm not the adversely-affected party, but I feel for the many permanent staff who I see subjected to this anti-pattern.
If you really want to put a dent in this, then lobbying for allowing single-party recording to bring evidence of malfeasance to law enforcement might be a start.
If so, then the expected response would be for that person to whistleblow and/or establish an EEOC complaint or lawsuit for perceived retaliation. Going along with wrongdoing when there's no immediate danger to his life or even arguably livelihood (as a high-ranking engineering exec, he could probably find another gig easily) isn't a defensible position.
Is it because the engineering companies do not bribe the legislature enough, or because there is no threat to the stability of the financial system if they are prosecuted?
The moral of the story is if you are going to engage in major fraud, make sure the economy will be seriously destabilized if you and your cronies are prosecuted.
OTOH Michael Horn CEO of VW and person who signed off on the emissions testing cheating walked away with a 50 million pension.
Of course, you often get no choice in what you do when upper management says 'just do it'. It's that, or asshat exec decides to wreck your career, fire you, etc, etc,
A federal judge in Detroit ... of course..
> you often get no choice in what you do when upper management says 'just do it'
You always have a choice. You can quit.
If your boss told you to rob a bank, would you do it? It's a more severe crime but it's still your boss saying "break the law or I'll fire you". It's simply a matter of where you draw the line, of how far into unethical territory you're willing to go for money.
At the time I write this post many comments are claiming the execs will go free and this guy just took a fall. The article clearly says this guy was a low ranking executive, other executive were charged and this guy plead guilty, implying he rolled on them (but not stating that).
It's also possible that Liang was an engineer at the time of the crime, and then was moved to an executive position:
> Liang is still employed by Volkswagen but no longer works as an engineer.
According to the OP:
> Federal prosecutor Mark Chutkow countered that Liang was a "pivotal figure" in designing the systems used to make Volkswagen diesels appear to comply with U.S. pollution standards, when instead they could emit up to 40 times the allowed levels of smog-forming compounds in normal driving.
This wasn't just someone who wrote some code that he didn't intend to be misused. This is someone who used his expertise to direct the implementation of an unlawful system. To be successful in that, it seems you'd have to have a decent understanding of the law that you intend to break.
I'm in favor on increased whistle blower programs. There were lots of people who knew what was going at Enron and VW and others. If companies are morally bankrupt and think of profits at all costs, we should reward the grunts who can expose it.
The law is generally written in legalese. It is really hard to understand how X volts on some sensor relates to emissions regulations. Therefore the engineers doing the work are easy to mislead, they probably don't even have access to sensor values that can directly tell you something in the law. Rather it is a mechanical engineer explaining that when the temperature is X and (pages of sensors they do have) you change these actuator settings. Give wrong information here and the engine will run as design and the programmer who made the mistake won't even know.
Maybe I'm trying too hard to find a silver lining.
I'm angered at the hypocrisy of the management getting to sleep in their own beds for the next 40 months and their kids having no indication of their parent's role in this crime, while this engineer's reputation gets smeared for life. Not that he was innocent, but being the lone fallguy for a billion dollar corporation doesn't particular feel like justice.
He happened to be the executive in charge of engineering. He also plead guilty.
Pleading guilty, however, is as much a sign of pragmatic intelligence as actual guilt, especially when dealing with federal law enforcement in the US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/volkswagen-diese...
Keep in mind that Assange is essentially the head of a news organization, and famous himself (in a related fashion). He can say both facts and opinions and they will be picked up and carried by others without checking the veracity or likelihood of being true because of his celebrity. Additionally, people will exaggerate his claims based on their own agendas. It's worth looking into the situation before accepting his take on it, or even that of his supporters, verbatim.
"Qui tam" where the whistleblower can receive "between 15% and 25% of any award or settlement amount" on cases like this seems to be a pretty huge incentive.
Look at the "Example" section in [1]:
- 2009 :
[...] was awarded $51.5 million for his role as a whistleblower
102 million that was distributed between the six whistleblowers
[...] whistleblower was awarded 18% of the $253 million civil settlement
- 2012 :
was entitled to $3.6 million of the settlement
Obviously he still has a boss, but I doubt the boss outright told him to cheat. Smart companies don't break the law that way. They just give their people goals that can't be met legally, while wink wink telling them that legal compliance is important, and let them figure out how to reconcile it.
Fuck the judicial system in the US.
"I'll only break your hand instead of cutting it off" doesn't mean you're getting a good deal.
Maybe not directly comparable to a janitor.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-09/veteran-v...
There's a lot of insight as to why from "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives"
Quoting directly FTA: "U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far.
Another VW executive, Oliver Schmidt, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in Detroit on Dec. 6. Under a plea agreement, Schmidt could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violating clean air laws."
This thread is fulling of people who didn't read a tiny well written article.
Not what would come to people's mind when "executive" is mentioned.
But I'm sure VW wants you to think their high level executives are being punished.
If the article is wrong then we should be talking about that (and the other executives that the article claims were charged) and not just presuming things.
If a sales executive considered executive?
If a person has 5 reports, is he/she an executive?
It's impossible to be wrong to call everyone working in a company "executive", and both VW and DOJ know this.
I suppose it might not well written, but it certainly is concise. This took me about 90 seconds to read in full. That is entirely reasonable to read before posting.
They have no trouble charging engineers and low level managers, but then it stops. It's not my cynicism because it happened so many times.
DOJ has no trouble charging a Goldman Sachs trader, but will never charge C-suite executives.
Read the book.
Don't be surprised when you get the same results.
"I was just following orders" is just as poor of an excuse for engineers as it was for nazis.
If you know more than others, don't put them down; teach us.
Edit: your recent comments have been crossing into incivility and you've done that (and we've warned you) many times before. If you keep doing this we will ban you, so would you please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start being scrupulously civil when commenting here? We'd greatly appreciate your help to stave off the decline of this place at least a little longer.
Waiting for his boss to get 400 months, and 10x until CEO level. They killed people ffs.
You say that as though they shot them or discussed the possible body count in a meeting.
Sure, people died as a far downstream result of a bunch of cars polluting a lot more than they supposedly did. The effect is far enough downstream that it's not really relevant. The alternative to VW breaking the law was not a pollution free world. People die as a result of things that are technically preventable all the time but society does not have the resources to allocate to preventing every "preventable" death or disease.
We as a society don't judge people by every downstream effect of their actions.
The lithium mine required to supply some of the materials for the computer or phone you typed that poorly thought out comment on probably isn't doing good things to the people that work at it.
I'm sure you own a few products that "fund terrorism" (or some other boogeyman) somewhere up the supply chain.
The world is a dirty place. Trying to make an example out of everyone who contributes to it just makes it dirtier.
Breaking antipollution rules was pretty close upstream. Say boss wants to dumps cyanide into water supply, asks you to switch samples used for testing. Close enough for me to blow whistle.
It's pretty well known NOx shorten our lives (NOx + H20 = nitric acids in lungs)
>a bunch of cars polluting a lot more than they supposedly did 40x in NOx
They knew and pushed us into them (anyone else advertised diesel?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNS2nvkjARk
Lastly it's the particles Pm2.5 Pm10. Especially dangerous to children
I disagree. Your approach just leads to buck-passing and cover-ups as corporate actors get into the habit of dumping costly externalities in the public's lap while pocketing subsidies and profits obtained through deception.
Guessing the cost of the externality requires estimating the excess pollution emitted by each vehicle model, the mortality incidence associated with the pollutants, and the sales volume - very easy for automotive production executives to acquire and correlate, an economic analysis they would be expected to perform anyway as part of their job.
Are you thinking of issues like bio-accumulation of pollutants?
They're calling him an engineer out of respect for his professional qualifications as such things are immensely important in Germany. Because he was an engineer, he has a duty to not act unethically within his professional capacity, and is shamed more than a mere MBA-style executive would be.
Edit: Please explain how the VW case is any different than my analogy
If you're afraid with a reason, someone else did that to you.
(Those people have spreadsheets with everything weighed. Raise their costs, they'll cut out the psycho.)
Otherwise the next time the CEO asks you to destroy the competition you'll say that he didn't specifically told you to not actually take that literally so it isn't your fault that you shot a guy in the head.
However, no matter how unrealistic the delivery estimates are, the execs are not responsible if I run red lights or speed to meet those requirements. There is obviously no legal liability on the CEO unless he explicitly instructed or encouraged me to do so.
"Liang’s lawyer, Daniel Nixon, on Friday urged Cox to consider a sentence of house arrest, saying Liang was not a “mastermind” of the emissions fraud. Liang “blindly executed a misguided loyalty to his employer,” Nixon said."
Also, executives are being charged:
"U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far.
Another VW executive, Oliver Schmidt, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in Detroit on Dec. 6. Under a plea agreement, Schmidt could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violating clean air laws."
I find it horrifying that engineers here on HN think that following orders is a good enough reason to stay out of jail for something like this. No matter what executives have done, we must never remove all blame from the people who are directly responsible for committing crimes rather than doing the right thing.