I think the fine was for the criminal part of this, which was fraud, not the safety part. It is one this to be made aware of a problem, to start looking into it only to find it is a truly bad thing that you messed up on, and then to tell everyone 'Noting to see here. All's well'.

The GM problem is still under investigation. GM did take active steps to solve the problem and made a running design change, but did they ever issued a recall? This could be seen as denying the problem, but I don't think they ever came right out and said they had looked into it and found nothing.

To complicate matters the GM that was in business then is no longer around, in a legal sense, so the GM that currently exists could argue in court they had nothing to do with it. If I were the Judge I would not be impressed with this line of thought, but from a legal standpoint there are a lot of things companies do that I don't agree with.

The Toyota case took two years to figure out before any fines were levied. By the time any GM case is decided a new person will be President. If that person is a Republican and GM slides with no fines will it be because of politics or because GM did not commit a crime?