I have little problem in quartering the executives of those company if need be, but bankruptcy condemns the lower-level workers a lot more.
Many of those are needed to transform the industry, so I hope they’ll find better position, and bankruptcy could help them realise that — but it is going to be painful. Firing those responsible and everyone above them sounds preferable.
VW's former CEO to draw salary until December 2016
During almost nine years as CEO, Winterkorn amassed a pension pot of 28.6 million euros (21 million pounds) and last year was the highest-paid CEO among the heads of companies listed on Germany's DAX-30 blue-chip index with remuneration of about 16 million euros.
"Taking responsibility" means very little these days. The problem with corporations is that nobody is truly responsible for any crimes committed by the company. If the people responsible were to actually go to prison or pay any fines out of their own pockets, then I suspect they would be a lot more careful.
Any fines paid by the company itself, no matter how crippling, eventually only really hurts the workers (because they're downsized), the customer (higher prices to cover the extra cost) or even shareholders (sometimes that may be appropriate, sometimes not). Ultimately higher management remains in control, and no matter how guilty they are, they invariably end up being the ones to decide who really gets punished here.
This would be true for almost any worker in Europe, unless you could prove in court that he/she had been grossly incompetent -- and such a case could drag on for years and cost as much as the severance pay.
He should be fired for incompetence, as should every person in the chain of command between him and the highest-level person who is fired for actually committing fraud.
