When a criminal on the street steals money from your wallet, they go to jail. When small-business owners cheat their customers, they go to jail. But when corporate executives at big companies oversee huge frauds that hurt tens of thousands of people, they often get to walk away with multimillion-dollar payouts.Too often, prosecutors don’t even…
Tag: corporate crime
The FTC’s Facebook fine should target Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.
On Slate, April Glaser writes about the prospect of a record-setting fine likely to be imposed on Facebook by the FTC. It raises the usual issue raised memorably by Edward, First Baron Thurlow: Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to…
Oil Company CEO Fails to Disclose “Loans” (Actually Bribes)
Oil company CEO John D. Schiller Jr. failed to disclose more than $10 million in personal loans he received while serving as chief executive officer of now-defunct Energy XXI. He sought the money in exchange for business contracts in 2014, when he was facing margin calls on a highly leveraged account secured by his company…
Disclose Bribes To Foreign Governments Disguised As Corporate Social Responsibility Investments?
Harry G. Broadman writes in Forbes: The U.S. House of Representatives, spurred on by the Trump Administration, is continuing its assault on a portion of a 2010 statute that requires certain U.S. businesses to disclose to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) payments made to foreign governments. In a perfect, corruption-free world of international…
Can Corporations Be Held to the Public Interest, or Even to the Law? by David A Ciepley :: SSRN
We support other options including replacement of the board (and debarment of directors from serving on any other boards), adoption of governance improvements including proxy access, majority vote requirements, and separation of CEO and Chair. We are not persuaded that the German system (which has so far shown no advantage over the US system) would…
More Trouble for Wells Fargo: Bank Improperly Kept a Pension Fund’s Fee Rebates – WSJ
Wells Fargo cannot seem to get it right. This is especially disturbing considering its many previous violations and promises that all its problems have been solved. And it is even more disturbing that in this case the relationship was not just with a customer, but a pension fund for whom it was acting in a…
AT&T, foreign corporations risk legal action for payments to Michael Cohen firm – MarketWatch
The payments made to the personal attorney of President Donald Trump raise questions as to whether these companies violated anti-bribery rules, experts in federal bribery laws say.The lawyer for the adult film star suing the president revealed that three companies, AT&T, Switzerland’s Novartis and Korea Aerospace Industries, made payments to Michael Cohen. Each company has…
Jes Staley, Thomas Middelhoff, and what Europe gets right about CEO accountability.
The FT today published a fascinating interview with Thomas Middelhoff, the former CEO of Bertelsmann, the German media giant. Middelhoff became a star during the dot-com boom—his $50 million investment in AOL became a $7 billion exit five years later—and then his star fell. Middelhoff ended up sentenced to three years in prison after being found…
The Trump Administration Is Letting Wells Fargo Get Away With Grand Theft Auto | The Nation
In January, Wells Fargo announced a one-time benefit from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of $3.89 billion. With the 40 percent cut in the corporate-income tax, Wells could write down the cost of its deferred tax liabilities—money it owed down the road to the government. So with the stroke of a pen, Donald Trump…
NY Times Editorial: Time to Treat White Collar Criminals Like…Criminals
There’s a novel thought: enforcing laws on white collar crime.Take the extensive money laundering Mr. Manafort is accused of undertaking with shell companies that hide ownership. How could he have expected to get away with it? Perhaps he saw what happened when one of the world’s largest banks, HSBC, helped launder billions of dollars in…
