Yeah right, after five years? Do you think they returned the money? What if most advertisers were one off shots to hit the jackpot on a new startup and failed within six months? Who did they give the money back? Their own pockets?
Come on, PR may say "oh no, we give that money to charity" while texting from a yacht in the middle of the caribbean.
Given Google's continuous refusal to provide an adequate resolution mechanism despite all the negative PR, we can only assume they have a strong financial motivation to not provide it.
Interestingly, AdSense bans are almost always around pay day. We don't know what they do with the funds after an account is banned — we can only go on their word and goodwill, which we know is not to be trusted.