{"id":7046,"date":"2017-09-01T05:37:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T05:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7046"},"modified":"2017-09-01T05:37:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T05:37:50","slug":"last-word-on-vw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/09\/01\/last-word-on-vw\/","title":{"rendered":"Last word \u2013 on VW"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week a VW engineer, James Liang, was sentenced to 40 months in jail and given a $200,000 fine. \u00a0The Detroit judge said that\u00a0Mr. Liang and other VW executives and employees were responsible for a \u201cmassive and stunning fraud\u201d that violated the trust that consumers need to have in goods and services purchased from corporations. \u00a0The NY Times<\/a>\u00a0[*] reported the judge saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very serious and troubling crime against our economic system. \u00a0Without that trust in corporate America, the economy can\u2019t function.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The judge said Mr. Liang had been \u201ctoo loyal\u201d to VW, and unwilling to expose its deceptive practices or walk away from his $350,000-a-year job.<\/p>\n

VW, which has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act, as well as customs violations and obstruction of justice, has\u00a0agreed to pay $4.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties. \u00a0This is part of a $22 billion<\/strong> in settlements and fines that VW is paying as a result of its cheating \u2013 although UK consumers are not getting a cent of this.<\/p>\n

Six other Volkswagen executives have been indicted in the US case, as well as one employee of Audi. \u00a0One executives, Oliver Schmidt, the former head of Volkswagen\u2019s environmental and engineering centre in Michigan, has been held without bail since his arrest in January 2017 . Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government and violating the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n

Note that will you: \"violating the clear air act<\/em>\". \u00a0Does the UK even have a clean air act? \u00a0If so, has VW been accused of violating it? \u00a0You know the answer. \u00a0The contrast between the US and UK governments could not be clearer. \u00a0In the US, the Department Justice threw the book at VW; in the UK, the government has been dragged repeated to the Courts by a charity [Client Earth] in order to get it to enforce its own air quality legislation. \u00a0Why are we not\u00a0much<\/em> more angry about this?<\/p>\n

.................................<\/p>\n

*<\/strong> Here's a NYT graphic<\/a> on how the scam worked, which cars were involved, and the difference it made to emissions. \u00a0And this link<\/a> provides more of the detail of the scandal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week a VW engineer, James Liang, was sentenced to 40 months in jail and given a $200,000 fine. \u00a0The Detroit judge said that\u00a0Mr. Liang and other VW executives and employees were responsible for a \u201cmassive and stunning fraud\u201d that...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}