this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Despite what the headline says, no execs went to jail. The two who were punished with jail terms were middle management.
Martin Winterkorn, the CEO, will probably avoid any serious consequences.
I only have cursory knowledge of this incident, but: It's possible that was the right outcome. A lot of middle managers do some heinous shit, and then report only positive news to upper management with a "Don't worry about it" attitude.
We all know there's also evil CEOs in the world as well, but maybe the investigation found this wasn't one of them. 'Course, maybe they were just better at keeping plausible deniability.
The Board had discussions about how to stonewall California. US prosecutors have filed charges against the CEO but Germany won’t extradite.
They are all guilty as fuck.
Of course Germany won't extradite we don't extradite nationals to non-EU countries. It can even happen that we don't extradite Americans to the US because they can demonstrate that they're likely to face torture in the US, such as isolation cells.