121,000 euros. Or what is the same, 3,781.25 euros per km/h exceeded the permitted speed limit. That’s what Anders Wiklöf, one of the richest men in Finland, paid last year for driving at 82 km/h in a place where the maximum limit was 50 km/h.
The same infraction, in Spain, would be punishable with four points less on the driving license and a financial penalty of 400 euros. In fact, Wiklöf, if he paid the fine during the first days, would only have to pay 200 euros in financial punishment.
“I’m really sorry,” Wiklöf said when he realized the mistake. Of course, he also took the opportunity to throw a dart at the Government: “I hope it helps plug some holes,” he said, referring to the Finnish Executive’s intention to cut health care by 1.5 billion euros.
283,000 euros in a decade
Anders Wiklöf is a Finnish millionaire who owns Wiklöf Holding, a group of more than 20 companies that invest in all types of sectors, from logistics to aviation, real estate and tourism. This allows him to be considered one of the richest men in the country.
The news broke last summer, when it became public that the tycoon had been caught by a radar traveling at 82 km/h on a road limited to 50 km/h. However, the 121,000 euros fine They are not the first important disbursement that Wiklöf has had to make to the coffers of the Finnish State.
A decade ago, it already reported that this same millionaire was fined in 2013 for exceeding the maximum speed allowed by more than 15%. The infraction was considered serious and, consequently, he had to disburse 95,000 euros to settle his debt to the State.
Between these two infractions, Wiklöf was hunted once again. This time, according to him, he had to deposit a total of 63,000 euros into the Finnish coffers. In total, three fines and almost 300,000 euros deposited in fines. Sanctions that, in the vast majority of European countries, would not have exceeded 1,000 euros in the final sum.
Wiklöf was referring to this same thing in 2013, who stressed that the same infraction in Sweden, just a few kilometers away from where he had been fined 95,000 euros, would have been much less. “They would have fined me 4,000 crowns (about 450 euros) and it is an enormous difference. I cannot understand that I am a bigger offender here than there, but the law is what it is,” they reported then in .
It is not the only case: this is how the daily fine works
With the passage of time, it seems that Anders Wiklöf has become resigned to this type of sanctions. It is not the only known case either. The most famous, probably, is Anssi Vanjokithen a director of Nokia.
Vanjoki fell into the same mistake many years before Wiklöf. It was 2002, Nokia had not yet fallen into catastrophe and Vanjoki did not know that he was about to pay 116,000 euros for exceeding the speed limits by 25 km / h. The driver, in that case, was traveling at 75 km/h in an urban area limited to 50 km/h.
The story went viral instantly, if the word viral was already used more than two decades ago. Surprised, we learned that fines in Finland are paid based on the severity of the infraction (as in Spain, for example) but, and here is the difference, also based on the finances of each offender.
The fact of having progressive fines based on income draws attention in systems like the Spanish one, where we are accustomed to all citizens paying the same for breaking the speed limits, regardless of each person’s income. However, it is a system that is widely accepted in Finland, with four out of five citizens supporting it at the beginning of the new century.
All in all, the Finnish system has not been as harsh on these millionaires as the Swiss one. In 2010, another millionaire broke two records in Switzerland with a single violation. Caught at 290 km/h on a highway in the country, the authorities claimed that they had never caught a driver driving so fast and stressed that the car took almost a kilometer to stop once it was notified by the agents.
The second record was set at the time of paying the fine: more than 900,000 euros of financial penalty. A very different result from that of that millionaire who they wanted to fine in Germany for traveling at more than 400 km/h on an Autobahn… and who got away after proving that he had done nothing wrong.