Business Fraud Crimes
Business crimes are committed by people who are respected in the society. So business crimes are also called white collar crimes. Business crimes include insider trading, embezzlement, forgery, computer crime, fraud and bribery. Now a day, business crimes involve billions of dollars. It is very much doubtful whether the perpetrators in the United States are getting their dues especially when they are the top officials of big corporations. All crimes are committed by individuals or groups of individuals. It must be dealt as such. People should not escape penalty just because they belong to big corporations. The current trend in the United States is that the corporate executives who commit white collar crimes escape with a promise not to repeat the crime or with a fine.
Right to privacy is guaranteed in this country. But, now we see this right to privacy is violated in several ways by corporations. For the purpose of customer relation management big companies must have a lot of personal data about the existing and prospective clients. In other words, the corporations collect information about the customers which infringe their right to privacy. Freedom and privacy are inter-related. Any threat to privacy is a direct threat to freedom.
Misleading the market, market manipulation and market abuse are all clearly business crimes and they must be dealt with as such. But in practice only some of the perpetrators of such crimes have to face criminal prosecution. Others are seen escaping with civil action or regulatory enforcement action. It seems that there is no uniform method to apply in every case of business crimes. Some of the corporate crimes committed in recent times are of great magnitude. Those frauds committed by Enron, Tyco, Worldcom and Adelphia are much bigger than any blue collar crimes. Another business crime continuously is being committed is the health care fraud. It runs into a few hundred billions of dollars every year. The savings and loan fraud of the United States is said to have swindled the people of 300 to 500 billion dollars.
On the manufacturing front tens of thousands of people die every year with occupational diseases. Asbestosis and black lung are some of the major occupational killer diseases of the United States. The people responsible for these are respectable in society and they have a powerful lobby to influence even the law making in the country. They are never booked for any killing even though they cause more deaths than those caused by the street gangsters and the mafia. One major example is the automobile industry. They could effectively block any legislation in the Congress for punishment for willful violation of safety laws in the industry. Environmental pollution is another thing which the perpetrators are not asked to answer.
The unfortunate part is that the companies are now prepared to take more risks. The reason is that they are sure that they can get a deal with the prosecutors when they are caught and get away with a small fine as per their standard. Another way out is to get the prosecution deferred.
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