CORPORATE CRIME COSTS US MORE THAN STREET CRIME

To see 100 top CORPORATE CRIMINALS GO TO Http:/www.corporatecrimereporter.com Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the Decade by Russell Mokhiber                                                                  © Russell Mokhiber Introduction Top 100 Corporate Criminals -- Brief List Top 100 Corporate Criminals -- Annotated Version INTRODUCTION Every year, the major business magazines put out their annual surveys of big business in America. You have the Fortune 500, the Forbes 400, the Forbes Platinum 100, the International 800 -- among others. These lists rank big corporations by sales, assets, profits and market share. The point of these surveys is simple -- to identify and glorify the biggest and most profitable corporations. The point of the list contained in this report, The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the Decade -- is to focus public attention on a wave of corporate criminality that has swamped prosecutors offices around the country. This is the dark underside of the marketplace that is given little sustained attention and analysis by politicians and news outlets. To compile The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, we used the most narrow and conservative of definitions -- corporations that have pled guilty or no contest to crimes and have been criminally fined. The 100 corporate criminals fell into 14 categories of crime: Environmental (38), antitrust (20), fraud (13), campaign finance (7), food and drug (6), financial crimes (4), false statements (3), illegal exports (3), illegal boycott (1), worker death (1), bribery (1), obstruction of justice (1) public corruption (1), and tax evasion (1). We did not try to assess and compare the damage committed by these corporate criminals or by other corporate wrongdoers. There are millions of Americans who care about morality in the marketplace. But few Americans realize that when they buy Exxon stock, or when they fill up at an Exxon gas station, they are in fact supporting a criminal recidivist corporation. And few Americans realize that when the take a ride on a cruise ship owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, they are riding on a ship owned by a criminal recidivist corporation. Six corporations that made the list of the Top 100 Corporate Criminals were criminal recidivist companies during the 1990s. In addition to Exxon and Royal Caribbean, Rockwell International, Warner-Lambert, Teledyne, and United Technologies each pled guilty to more than one crime during the 1990s. A few caveats about this report. Caveat one: Big companies that are criminally prosecuted represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing. For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught. For every company convicted of polluting the nation's waterways, there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail in exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or high-level executives. For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are thousands who give money legally through political action committees to candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that effectively has legalized bribery. For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides remain legal. For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a worker, there are hundreds of others that don't even get investigated for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few district attorneys across the country (Michael McCann, the DA in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, being one) regularly investigate workplace deaths as homicides. Caveat two: Corporations define the laws under which they live. For example, the automobile industry over the past 30 years has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and willful violations of the federal auto safety laws. Now, if an auto company is caught violating the law, and if the cops are not asleep at the wheel, only a civil fine is imposed. Caveat three: Because of their immense political power, big corporations have the resources to defend themselves in courts of law and in the court of public opinion. Few prosecutors are willing to subject themselves to the constant legal and public relations barrage that a corporation's well connected and high-priced legal talent can inflict. It is a testament to the tenacity of a few dedicated federal prosecutors that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, for example, was criminally convicted of polluting the oceans. In the criminal prosecution of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines the company was facing a team of two federal criminal prosecutors. To defend itself, Royal Caribbean hired Judson Starr and Jerry Block, both of whom have served as head of the Justice Department's Environmental Crimes Section, and former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. Also representing Royal Caribbean were former federal prosecutors Kenneth C. Bass III, and Norman Moscowitz. Donald Carr of Winthrop & Stimson also joined the defense team. Hired on as experts on international law issues were former Attorney General Eliot Richardson, University of Virginia law professor John Norton Moore, former State Department officials Terry Leitzell and Bernard Oxman, and four retired senior admirals. As the case proceeded to trial, Royal Caribbean engaged in a massive public relations campaign, taking out ads during the Super Bowl, putting former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrators on its board of directors, and donating thousands of dollars to environmental groups. Federal prosecutors overcame this legal and public relations barrage and convicted the company. But that was an unusual prosecution and unusually determined prosecutors. While the 1990s was a decade of booming markets and booming profits, it was also a decade of rampant corporate criminality. There is an emerging consensus among corporate criminologists. And that emerging consensus is this: corporate crime and violence inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined. The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year. Compare this to the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from Americans as a result of corporate and white-collar fraud. Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. The savings and loan fraud -- which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" -- cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion. And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year -- and on down the list. Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can't compare street crime and corporate crime -- corporate crime is not violent crime. Unfortunately, corporate crime is often violent crime. The FBI estimates that, 19,000 Americans are murdered every year. Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice. These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. They are sometimes prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws. And environmental crimes often result in death, disease and injury. In 1998, for example, a Tampa, Florida company and the company's plant manager were found guilty of violating a federal hazardous waste law. Those illegal acts resulted in the deaths of two nine-year-old boys who were playing in a dumpster at the company's facility. This report is only a tiny step in an effort to fill a great void in corporate crime research. The Justice Department has the information and should get the budget to begin putting out yearly reports on corporate crime. Every year, the Justice Department puts out an annual report titled "Crime in the United States." But by "Crime in the United States," the Justice Department means "street crime in the United States." So, in "Crime in the United States" document you will read about burglary, robbery and theft. There is nothing in it about price-fixing, corporate fraud, pollution, or public corruption. A yearly Justice Department report on Corporate Crime in the United States is long overdue.