Marketplace: Where does money collected from corporate fines go?
Corporations have racked up $804,000,000,000 in fines, fees and penalties for stealing worker wages, cheating consumers, committing fraud, wrecking the environment and various other ways since 2000, our database chronicling corporate misconduct shows.
Ever wondered where that money goes?
Marketplace by APM seeks to answer (with the help of our Violation Tracker) in this week’s episode of “I’ve Always Wondered.”
“The biggest flaw with financial penalties, (Kathleen Engel, a research professor of law at Suffolk University) said, is that they may not be a deterrent if the money a company can make by not obeying the law exceeds the size of the potential penalty. (Although she noted that companies may not want to risk harming their reputations.)
Engel pointed out that companies like Wells Fargo have been sanctioned multiple times. The bank and its subsidiaries have been hit with more than 100 fines in the past decade by multiple agencies, according to the online database Violation Tracker.”
Read the full story at Marketplace.