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by dragonwriter 939 days ago
> I know this is how the US operates, still it's weird to trade cash for criminal allegations.

I would imagine that the US is not unique in either (1) making corporations liable for crime, or (2) having the principal sanction against the corporation itself for any crime be either monetary or a combination of monetary sanction and injunction or similar behavioral controls.
2 comments
echelon 939 days ago
You can't imprison or kill [1] a company.

You can impose civil or criminal penalties on the directors, but the shareholders are also (perhaps rightly) punished when you impose fines.

A government can also seize a company's assets and redistribute them to recover costs, but in doing so you often dismantle the value.

[1] (At least not in the same way you can impose capital punishment on a human.)

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justinclift 939 days ago
But it really seems more like the US doesn't care about stopping the criminal behaviour.

If they did care, then paying (some amount) to get off scott free wouldn't be an option.

The current approach of allowing payola (like this) just encourages bad actors.

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