Seems like you're recommending a system of scapegoating. It would be easy for executives to suggest such a change in a round-about way to managers (Gee I sure wish it was impossible for other companies to service our trains). The managers then field the suggestion to any programmer they know to be particularly "non political" and amoral. Then when the official investigation kicks off, all the blame is laid on the "lone wolf" programmer (who in fact was not a lone wolf because he was chided on by management and indirectly inspired by the executive) and the company itself is let off the hook?

In these situations the entire company needs to catch the blame, even if the commits can be pinned to one programmer. By all means fine or imprison the programmer, but also charge his boss because he knew or was criminally negligent for not knowing, and ditto the bosses' bosses up to the executives. And fine the hell out of the entire corporation; either they knew this happened and did it deliberately, or they were negligent for allowing something like this to happen. Either way the whole corp needs to pay.