It is better not to be too rich when you commit offences in Finland... Anders Wiklöf, a 76-year-old Finnish businessman from the autonomous province of Åland, understood this well, after receiving a fine of 121,000 euros for driving 30 km/h above the legal limit, according to local media. A punishment commensurate with his income, since in his country, the amount of the fines is indexed to the level of income of the offender. Result: the more you win, the higher the fine.
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Up to one million euros fine
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I regret (...) I had started to slow down but not enough, "he defended himself in the newspaper Nya Åland, explaining that he was flashed at more than 80 km / h on a road yet limited to 50 km / h. And if he says he is sorry to have been caught red-handed, the septuagenarian especially hoped that this sum would be used wisely. Not sure that the incident serves as a lesson, since according to local media, the one who is none other than the CEO of a large Finnish bank would have already received two other fines of 64,000 and 95,000 euros, in 2018 and 2013, for similar facts.
He is not the only millionaire in the country to have already checked out. In 2022, Anssi Vanjoki, the former vice president of Nokia Mobile Solutions, had for example been fined more than 100,000 euros, after being flashed at 75 km / h on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, in a zone limited to 50 km / h. And this principle applies not only to speeding and other traffic offences, but also to all types of offences, such as shoplifting.
In Europe, only Switzerland has a similar system of income-geared-to-income tickets. It is also in this country that the highest fine for speeding was recorded: in 2010, a Swede was fined nearly 800,000 euros after being caught at 290 km/h between Bern and Lausanne. According to the BBC, the man had indeed been sentenced to pay a daily fine of 3600 Swiss francs for 300 days. That is a "day-fine" of nearly 1.1 million euros.