I never really thought about it, but yes, a fine without an admission of guilt is precisely a bribe. Consider the trade: you pay X dollars and in return they bury whatever evidence they have against you and you don't go to jail. Doesn't that describe a bribe to a cop or a judge or a prosecutor? As a corrallary I find it interesting that the media reports fines not as a fraction of net worth, but rather as an absolute amount. Clearly this serves the interest of both briber (who wants to be seen as punished more than it is) and the bribee (who wants the revenue, no matter how little it harms the briber).

When a decently sized percentage of it goes to "independent monitors" almost entirely run by ex-DOJ revolving door types, yeah. See https://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0607/companies-payoffs-wa...

And some think that FCPA enforcement and huge fines targeted at European companies like BNP Paribas motivated the creation of the EU tech extortion apparatus.

The fines are more public. But low fines are otherwise pretty indistinguishable from "here is some money for you to look elsewhere".

As explained in other threads, McKinsey made almost the same amount of profit (adjusted for inflation) as the fine. So the message is:

- the effective fine (profit minus fine) is approximately 0, if you get caught.

- if you don't get caught, you get a profit of 120M.