Driver in Finland fined €121,000 for speeding
June 6, 2023
A wealthy driver has been fined €121,000 ($129,544) for speeding in Finland, where such penalties are calculated on the basis of an offender's income.
"I really regret the matter," Anders Wiklof told Monday's edition of the Nya Aaland,the main newspaper for the Aaland Islands, an autonomous region of Finland in the Baltic Sea.
He said that he was aware he was going from a 70 to a 50 zone and that he had been slowing down, but that evidently he had not slowed quickly enough.
He also expressed hope that the money he paid would be used for health care.
Wiklof was driving 82 kilometers per hour (51 miles per hour) in a 50 kilometer per hour (31 miles per hour) zone when police stopped and ticketed him on Saturday. Along with getting the fine, he had his driver's license suspended for 10 days, the newspaper said.
Champion in speeding fines
It wasn't the first time Wiklof was caught driving too fast. In 2018, he was fined €63,680 (roughly $68,000), and he had to cough up €95,000 (roughly $102,000) five years earlier, also making international headlines then.
A native of Aaland, Wiklof is chairman of a holding company that includes businesses in the logistics, helicopter services, real estate, trade and tourism sectors. He's thought to be Aaland's richest resident and is sometimes nicknamed the area's "king."
The archipelago sits at entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia, between the Finnish city of Turku, on mainland Finland's west coast, and Sweden's capital of Stockholm.
dh/msh (AP)