Skip to main content

BMW settles U.S. claims it refused lease refunds to military personnel

BMW AG agreed to pay more than $2.2 million to settle U.S. government claims that it failed to provide required refunds to 492 military personnel who lawfully terminated their vehicle leases because they were called to duty.

In the first case of its kind, the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said BMW Financial Services NA violated the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by having since August 2011 refused to reimburse so-called capitalized cost reductions to service members who ended their leases early.

BMW's payout includes $2.17 million to compensate the 492 service members, plus $60,788 to the U.S. Treasury. The German automaker did not admit or deny wrongdoing.

Capitalized cost reductions are upfront payments made to reduce monthly lease payments, and typically amount to thousands of dollars.

In papers filed with the federal court in Newark, New Jersey, the government said BMW violated the law by refusing as a matter of policy to refund such payments to service members who were called to duty for 180 days, or permanently assigned to new locations.


Source :- yahoonews

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We're open to work with Britain over incident involving ex-agent

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it was ready to cooperate if Britain asks it for help investigating an incident involving a former Russian double agent who fell ill after exposure to an unknown substance. Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was critically ill in hospital on Tuesday after he was exposed to an unidentified substance in southern England. "Nobody has approached us with such a request," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters, when asked if the British authorities had been in touch seeking help. "Moscow is always open for cooperation." When asked to respond to British media speculation that Russia had poisoned Skripal, Peskov said: "It didn't take them long." Calling the incident "a tragic situation," he said the Kremlin did not have information about what had happened. Source :- yahoonews

Key players recall 1968 Polish student revolt, ensuing anti-Semitism

In March 1968, a student revolt crushed by Poland's baton-wielding police was used as a pretext for an anti-Semitic purge by the communist regime. It began when the communists banned the 19th-century play "Forefathers' Eve" by poet Adam Mickiewicz claiming it had anti-Russian elements. Two students who contested the ban were expelled from the University of Warsaw, prompting their peers to stage a demonstration on March 8. Backed by other civil groups, particularly workers unhappy with daily life under communism, the pro-democracy protests spread to other cities. The regime used the student revolt as an excuse to unleash an anti-Semitic campaign that was rooted in a settling of scores inside the Communist Party, which was split into two camps. Source :- yahoonews

Tension with Israel 50 years after Poland's anti-Semitic campaign

On the 50th anniversary of a brutal anti-Semitic campaign in Poland, the country faces a diplomatic crisis with Israel over a controversial new Holocaust law. In 1968, partly to settle disputes inside the ruling Communist Party, the Polish government stripped many Jews of party membership -- and thus jobs -- prompting around 12,000 to leave the country. Today, Poland's conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) has been accused of trying to deny the Holocaust after introducing a law notably intended to prevent people from describing Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland as Polish. "It's not the same today," said Adam Michnik, a prominent communist-era dissident who is now editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading liberal newspaper. "There are certainly similarities. Once again there's a growing image of a Poland besieged by enemies and the enemies are the Jews who want to do us harm," he told AFP. Source :- yahoonews