The shareholders will end up with the valuation they end up with, but are immune from prosecution in all but the most explicit and egregious cases.
If they vote in directors, which they suspect will hire a criminal CEO, that’s enough levels of indirection that unless they write a memo explicitly stating to do so (and maybe even then!), the worst outcome for them is the valuation of the company drops to zero and they lose their capital, minus whatever dividends have been pulled out.
That is barring potential criminal conspiracy anyway, which would require concrete actions in furtherance of a conspiracy, which would be difficult to prove without something like that memo.
And yet the owners rely on the market/consumer giving them money to put food on the table and afford a roof over their head. Which is to say, user?id=delusional above was mostly joking.
