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No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements
No Wrongdoing Here, Just 6,300 Corporate Fines and Settlements
Despite the PR about how corporate profits benefit widows and orphans, this vast wealth is concentrated in the top 1% and the top 5%.
I am honored to share a remarkable data base of Corporate Fines and Settlementsfrom the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. Here is Jon’s description of his project to assemble a comprehensive list of all corporate fines and settlements that can be verified by media reports:
What struck me was the sheer number of corporate violations of laws and regulations–thousands upon thousands, the vast majority of which occurred since corporate profits began their incredible ascent in the early 2000s–and the list of those paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements, which reads like a who’s who of Corporate America and Top 100 Global Corporations.“This spreadsheet is all the corporate fines/settlements I’ve been able to find sourced articles about, mostly in the period from the 1990’s up to today (with a few 80’s and 70’s). This is by far the most comprehensive list of such things online. At least that I could find, because the lack of any decent list is what made me start compiling this list in the first place.”
I encourage you to open one of the three alphabetical tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet on Google Docs and scroll down to find your favorite super-profitable corporation.
Many have a long list of fines and settlements, and many of the fines are in excess of $100 million. Many are for blatant cartel price-fixing, not disclosing the dangers of the company’s heavily promoted medications, destroying documents to thwart an investigation of wrong-doing, etc.
In other words, these were not wrist-slaps for minor oversights of complex regulations— these are blatant violations of core laws of the land.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Corporate Crimes, Individual Accountability Is Elusive
In Corporate Crimes, Individual Accountability Is Elusive
“We have never hesitated to investigate and prosecute any individual, institution or organization that attempted to exploit our markets and take advantage of the American people,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proclaimed this month when the Justice Department announced that Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, had agreed to pay $1.375 billion to settle civil charges that it inflated ratings on mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the financial crisis.
And this week, he pledged a renewed effort to bring cases against individuals responsible for financial fraud, calling on federal prosecutorsto “try to develop cases against individuals and to report back in 90 days.”
Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.
Yes, plenty of people have been prosecuted for mortgage fraud and other financial crimes since the financial crisis: The Justice Department has charged over 4,000 people with mortgage fraud alone, according to a spokesman. And the department has filed 46,000 white-collar crime cases since 2009.
Yet almost all of these are low-level employees with little or no name recognition. Hardly any top executives at the financial firms paying multimillion- and billion-dollar-plus fines for engaging in criminal behavior have been charged or convicted. (One exception is Lee B. Farkas, former chairman of the mortgage firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, who isserving a 30-year prison term.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
