Corporate crime and no punshment

Great piece by Russell Mokhiber comparing the case of Leandro Andrades, a man imprisoned for life for stealing five videotapes worth $150, with the the failure of the US authorities to pursue criminal charges against any of the corporate executives responsible for two of the biggest crimes in US history- the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the financial meltdown of 2008-2009.

Two recent reports of inquiry into the Gulf Oil Spill and the 2008-2009 Financial crises failed to make any mention about corporate crime or criminal liability, despite finding massive systemic breaches of the law.

As Mohkiber writes:

"We live in a country with two systems of justice. One for the Leandro Andrades of this world and one for the Wall St Banks and their executives and the oil companies and their executives.... We have two systems of justice. One for the corporate class.. and one for the rest of us"

Criminalise corporations not civil society

'Limited liability is at the heart of this rise of corporate power: it constitutes a blanket exemption of a special interest group from accountability for the actions of their companies"

Blankenburg and Plesch

One consequence of the corporate structure and form is the ability to escape and hide liability and responsibility. The tenets of "limited liability" and "corporate person hood" allow corporations to avoid criminal responsibility. This protection is not available to individuals or civil society groups. Governments and authorities rarely use the full power of existing law against corporations.

It is telling to compare the way the US Government uses the full force of the law against civil society groups and whistle-blowers who try to hold it and corporations to account, with its complete inaction against recidivist corporate criminals such as BP who in their reckless disregard are responsible for the deaths of workers and the destruction of ecosystems, environments, livelihoods, and industries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The US government has arrested and imprisoned, without trial, a whistle blower who leaked to WikiLeaks a video showing US forces murdering 100 people, mainly children, in Garani Afghanistan. The video, which showed a US army helicopter gunning down civilians, was released by WikiLeaks early this year and caused outrage around the world. The soldier who is alleged to have released the video has been arrested and detained in an US army prison in Kuwait. The Australian founder of WikiLeaks has been forced to leave the US and go into hiding in response to a "manhunt" by the US government keen to arrest and prosecute him.

WikiLeaks collects and publishes evidence of human rights abuse and illegality by governments and corporations.

But when it comes to recidivist corporate criminals such as BP, Massey Energy or Goldman Sachs there is tough talk about criminal charges but little action. There is no serious attempt by governments to hold corporations, corporate executives, and shareholders personally and criminally responsible for the company's crimes. Laws are rarely used or enforced against corporations and the responsible individuals. And if charges are laid they are usually against low level functionaries and, as in the case of the corporate killings by Union Carbide in Bhopal, it takes 25 years before anyone is legally held to account.

corporate personhood: the idea that corporations are "persons"

"The folly at the root of this foolish economy began with the idea that a corporation should be regarded, legally, as "a person" But the limitless destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. As such, unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money.

The stockholders essentially are usurers, people who "let their money work for them", expecting high pay in return for low pay. The World Trade Organization enlarges the old idea of the corporation-as-a-person by giving the global corporate economy the status of a super government with the power to overrule nations.

I don't mean to say, of course, that all corporate executives and stockholders are bad people. I am only saying that all of them are very seriously implicated in a bad economy"

Wendell Berry: In the Presence of Fear