Iceman666
Fair question. Simple answer.
It is their "job" to know and ensure that the flight they are about to COMMAND i.e. take legal responsibility for its conduct, is in fact legal in the terms under which it is flight planned and conducted.
The owner may or may not (by contrivance) wear the consequences but he/she does not carry the legal burden when the door is shut.
If the pilot has not the wit nor courage to satisfy himself completely of the circumstances in which he would be able to defend his actions in a court of law, and with the full and active cooperation of the owner, then he should not be in command.
Owners tend to have strong if not overbearing characters/personalities and may be difficult to deal with, but you can be assured of one thing and that is they will ALWAYS act in their own best interests. Your job as the competent aviation expert on staff is to show him clearly how it is in his best interests to accept the facts and understand the significant financially adverse consequences.
It is a well trodden path and the contrivances well understood and revealed.
He would be complicit, with the owner in the illegal action.
Clearly this is not well understood by said pilots, or worse if it is, then either way the definition under debate is clearly correct in this context.
Turning a blind eye on anything for the sake of a job corrupts the integrity of the whole trust process on which the whole aviation safety process rests.