There Are No More Corporate Criminals

[marmar]

There Are No More Corporate Criminals

Posted on May 7, 2013
By Thomas Hedges


This report first appeared on Policy Shop.


Panelists at the annual Corporate Crime Reporter Conference in Washington, D.C. Friday said they were concerned that the Justice Department is abandoning full criminal prosecutions of financial industries in favor of Deferred and Non Prosecution Agreements (DPAs and NPAs), which usually involve a fine and a set of conditions that must be followed. The company in exchange does not get prosecuted for criminal activity.

DPAs and NPAs exploded in the 2000s and have redefined the legal system in which financial corporations operate. Twenty years ago, the Justice Department had two choices, which it calls ‘up or down decisions’: it could prosecute a company or not.

Now, agreements fill the space in between these two options and allow the Justice Department more flexibility in how it grapples with illegal activity in the financial sector.

Denis McInerney, a deputy assistant general for the Criminal Division and panelist at last week’s conference, is a defender of these agreements. The ‘up or down decisions,’ he says, do not involve compromise and reduce the Justice Department’s actions to two extremes.

“You either indict or ignore companies,” he says. “There’s no middle ground.” DPAs and NPAs, he says, allows the Department to monitor and influence a company’s future actions.

But these agreements, says David Uhlmann, another panelist and former chief of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section who is now a law professor at the University of Michigan, are now weak and act like a membership fee companies can pay to continue fraudulent behavior. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/there_are_no_more_corporate_criminals_20130507/

[HughBeaumont]

1. This is a wholesale violation of all that is moral.

We teach average citizens, students, seniors, men, women, children, etc. to uphold and respect the law, ethics and morals. So why is it corporations and the wealthy that run them pretty much just get away with whatever the hell they want to? Why is it that they're allowed to run this country? Does no one have a damned SPINE?

[mick063]

2. A routine operating expense

The only form of tax they realize. The cost of doing business.


Holder=worst AG ever.