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There are cases when a government will bring charges against an organization which includes a fine.
One case I think of is the EU fining Microsoft millions because they bundled their media player with their OS. The EU rules this was anti-competitive and fined them millions. Where does the money go in this situation?
To the governmental budget obviously.
For example shown in the EU 2014 budget on Page 102 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L:2014:051:FULL
Fines, periodic penalty payments and other penaltie: 1 492 000 000
That's for 2013
How are those fines calculated? Since 2006 this is the EU law http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52006XC0901%2801%29&from=EN
The first interesting thing to know whether there is a possible maximum:
The final amount of the fine shall not, in any event, exceed 10 % of the total turnover in the preceding business year of the undertaking or association of undertakings participating in the infringement, as laid down in Article 23(2) of Regulation No 1/2003.
Now how is the fine calculated (The EU gives out an almost formular approach because it got some criticism in the 90ies (I think) for not being predictable)
§19. The basic amount of the fine will be related to a proportion of the value of sales, depending on the degree of gravity of the infringement, multiplied by the number of years of infringement.
§21. As a general rule, the proportion of the value of sales taken into account will be set at a level of up to 30 % of the value of sales.
§24. In order to take fully into account the duration of the participation of each undertaking in the infringement, the amount determined on the basis of the value of sales (see points 20 to 23 above) will be multiplied by the number of years of participation in the infringement. Periods of less than six months will be counted as half a year; periods longer than six months but shorter than one year will be counted as a full year.
There's also Aggravating circumstances for
- Repeated offenders (+ up to 100% for EACH further infringement)
- not cooperating
- being the leader, instigator or trying to coerce others to also participate
