@kgandresen / InstagramThe world’s second youngest billionaire has been fined £23,000 for drunk driving in Norway.
22-year-old Katharina Andresen, who is worth an estimated $1.23 billion, according to Forbes, is said to have been caught three times over the legal limit when police stopped her.
In Norway, fines are based on the income of the defendant meaning the more you earn the more you pay, so the tobacco heiress was slapped with a hefty fine.
Andresen got her vast fortune when her father Johan transferred 42 per cent of his hedge fund to her and her 20-year-old sister Alexandra, report The Guardian.
Johan made his money when he sold a share in his tobacco business for $480million (£363million) in 2005 and now runs the Ferd investment company, according to the Mirror.
According to Norwegian business newspaper Finansavisen, Katharina was stopped near the family’s luxury cabin in the Hafjell ski resort.
Andresen was banned from driving for 13 months, given a suspended three-week prison sentence and fined 250,000 Krone (around £23,000), after she was judged to have no fixed income.
The state prosecutor had demanded the highest possible penalty and 18 days in prison but the court accepted ‘the assets she possesses, at the date of this judgment, have not yet yielded a dividend’.
While it may seem like a significant chunk of change it could have been far, far worse.
The judge warned, had the case been based on the ‘normal return of assets’, she would have been fined between 35-40 million Krone – nearly 4 million pounds.
In normal cases, judges fine drunk drivers 1.5 times their gross monthly salary, but they’ve the discretion to change the amount based on the ‘real financial position’ of the defendant.
Luckily for Katharina the court heard she’s a student who gets a monthly ‘salary’ of 9,000 Krone (around £825).
She told the Finansavisen newspaper in a text, she believed she’d waited enough time to drive after drinking and apologised.
As large as Katharina’s fine was, it’s got nothing on the largest speeding fine ever.
In 2010, a 37-year-old Swedish man was driving 180mph on a Swiss motorway – two and a half times the speed limit and was subsequently fined £650,000.
Getty/PixabayIn Switzerland, speeding fines are worked out using a complicated formula based on the income of the person speeding and how fast they were going.
Local police spokesman Benoit Dumas said of the incident, ‘nothing can justify a speed of 290km/h, as it’s not controllable’, according to the BBC.
When the speeding motorist was apprehended he explained how the speedo on the car was faulty – probably would’ve been cheaper to replace the speedometer.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
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