The nuclear leak in Fukushima in 211 was the most serious nuclear disaster after Chernobyl. This disaster was triggered by the earthquake and tsunami, which caused three nuclear reactors to melt down and three hydrogen explosions, releasing radioactive pollution from different devices. Therefore, a large area around the nuclear power plant was evacuated.
after the Fukushima disaster, critics accused the energy company TEPCO of lacking safety measures against such incidents. Although a Japanese court exempted three senior executives of TEPCO from criminal negligence cases in 219, the company had to pay a huge fine of $45 billion.
On April 2th, 21, a large-scale explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform operating in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and spewing out more than 4 million barrels of oil, which was polluted 7 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and the oil in the well continued to flow in the ocean for more than 87 days.
In these 87 days, oil has covered 1, miles of coastline in six states and more than 4, square miles in the Gulf of Mexico, which is the biggest oil spill in history. As an oil company, BP paid a high price for this environmental damage, and was finally fined 64 billion dollars before settling with the US Department of Justice.
Volkswagen, a well-known German automobile manufacturer, has always been known for its quality assurance. However, in history, Volkswagen has also suffered huge fines for failing to pass the quality test. For example, in 215, it was fined about $14 billion for modifying a car to pass the emission test.
Volkswagen has officially admitted that it has produced 11 million cars. These cars are equipped with a software called "cheating device" to cheat in the emission test. During the test, the performance of the car was changed to improve the results. The company was found to have hidden a large amount of toxic diesel oil, and thousands of cars from all over the world were recalled. Because people are cautious about climate change, this scandal is bad news and bad news for the automobile industry.
As we all know, during the financial crisis in 28, many people in the United States lost their life savings, houses and jobs. The main reasons for this crisis are cheap credit and loose loan standards. Financial institutions hold trillions of dollars worth of investment, and there is almost no hope of repayment. This is a subprime loan, and millions of American homeowners owe more debts than the value of their houses.
Experts call these financial behaviors that led to the economic collapse "immoral, inappropriate and reckless", but these behaviors are not illegal, so it is difficult to be punished. However, in the end, all banks involved in this crisis paid a heavy price, among which Bank of America paid a fine of $17 billion in 214, which is also the largest fine in the bank's history.
Google, a technology giant, is punished almost every year, but the amount is generally small. However, in 218, it suffered a huge fine of $9.5 billion. It is understood that the European Union charged Google $5 billion for using its Android mobile phone software to stop its competition. Google's software controls more than 8% of the world's smartphones, which forced its customers to use fixed search engines, thus weakening the competing search providers.
After that, it was charged $2.7 billion for promoting Google shopping instead of other shopping services in its search engine. At the same time, a series of further charges against Google also involved alleged anti-competitive practices, online privacy, data protection and concerns about network security, totaling about $9.5 billion, which also created the largest amount of punishment for Google in history.
in addition to Google, Facebook has also suffered sky-high fines. in 219, the us federal trade commission fined Facebook a record $5 billion for engaging in unfair behavior and infringing on consumers' privacy. in fact, in 218, the us federal trade commission launched an investigation into major concerns about Facebook's privacy incidents.
It was found that the company failed to protect the privacy of its millions of customers, and at the same time, Facebook misled its users to control the privacy of their personal information. This was the biggest fine ever imposed on a technology company for infringing users' privacy, which also dealt a serious blow to Facebook's reputation. So far, this problem has become the best evidence that some netizens "hacked" Facebook.
GlaxoSmithKline, the global healthcare giant, has a lot of "black history", and the most controversial one is that in 212, the Food and Drug Administration prosecuted and punished the criminal and civil liabilities arising from illegal promotion of certain prescription drugs and false price reports in the United States.
In the end, a fine of $3 billion was imposed, which was the largest fine paid by a pharmaceutical company to solve its criminal and civil liability. According to the terms of the plea agreement, GlaxoSmithKline had to pay $1 billion, including a criminal fine of about $95 million and a confiscation amount of $5 million, and paid $2 billion to the federal government to solve its criminal liability. In fact, such a huge fine is also a warning to all health care product manufacturers.