Corporate misconduct: 20 companies fined $7bn since Jan.

• Fine a drop-in-the-ocean for 8 coys

• Giant Amazon can pay in 32 seconds

Ben Eguzozie

In the face of daily corporate misconduct, latest research by Tradingpedia.com reveals that at least 20 companies across the world have been slapped with large fines since the beginning of this year (2024).

It is only five months into the year, and two major corporations have already been hit with some eye-watering sums, breaking the one billion US dollar mark.

The team at Tradingpedia scrutinised numerous criminal cases, civil actions, and settlements published by the US federal regulatory agencies, and tracked the companies that have suffered the largest fines since January 2024.

Engine maker Cummins has been ordered to pay over $2 billion by regulatory bodies since the beginning of the year. This marks the heftiest corporate fine this year so far, which is also the largest civil penalty in the history of the Clean Air Act and the second-largest environmental penalty ever.

Bribery, financial fraud, environmental offences, deceptive marketing, unfair practices and other law violations have cost the companies on our list nearly $7 billion since the beginning of 2024, said Tradingpedia. Cummins Inc. alone accounts for $2 of the total.

The European Commission had sanctioned Apple to pay another $1.9 billion over abusive App Store rules for music streaming providers.

Over 4,900 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, American regulatory authorities handed out a fine in excess of $40 million to Family Dollar Stores, a variety store chain, the largest-ever monetary criminal penalty in a food safety case to date.

Tradingpedia also calculated how long it would take these companies to pay all of their fines since January with the revenue they generated every day of 2023. According to the findings, eight of the companies, for which information was available, could clear their fines with less than a day’s revenue. Remarkably, Amazon could do it within just 32 minutes of operation.