Corporate Fraud Laws To The Rescue
July 22nd, 2009. Published under Legal. No Comments.
Criminology when referring to corporate crimes is the crimes that have been committed by the corporation or the persons involved with the day to day working of the organisation. This means that in the eyes of the law, a corporation is treated as an individual entity and any crime committed by the corporation may lead to imposition of penalties against it as well as the directors in charge of managing the company.
There is no fixed jurisdiction when it comes to pointing out what a corporate crime is. Corporate crime or fraud is more or less a blend of white collar crime, state corporate crime and organised crime. State corporate crime refers to the blatant ignorance of law, or wilfully acting against the spirit of the law decided by the state in pursuit of profit. It may be a degradation of environment, ignoring fair play regulations, underselling and overstocking based on future predictions against the government policies.
White collar crime refers to highly placed individuals in the upper echelons of a company that deliberately bend the law for their personal profit realisation. In this case the corporation is held accountable for the behaviour of its employees and may face restrictions as well as heavy fines. The majority of white collar crimes are committed out of greed rather than conceit. One such example is setting up a corporation with the intent of defrauding in the future. They start with building a good credit history with their suppliers and then after a 2-3 year period they simply disappear with the money.
A similar kind of white collar crime is the setting up of phoenix companies. The directors of a company build two companies with same names and same field, and intentionally make one company lose for the benefit of the other. The customer population loses money while the directors make a killing without having any impact on the outcome and production of the companies. People generally have trouble accepting that organised crime can be a part of corporate fraud. Corporations set up for the purpose of crime or for laundering the proceeds of crime also fall under this category.
Organised crime is very powerful and at one time, the outcome of the organised crime was believed to be equivalent to being amongst the top twenty in the list of the richest organisations in the world.
The punishment for corporate fraud is generally a fine, and imprisonment ranging from 6 months to 10 years. It is difficult to detect corporate fraud, as people generally do not leave any trace of evidence, being masters at what they do.
Bribery and corruption are a big problem in the modern world and the outcome of fraud cases takes around 5-10 years. People involved are generally so up in the social ladder that the courts grant them suspended sentences and hefty fines, but this has zero impact on the way they approach life. There is however, a suggestion to classify corporate fraud under criminal law and for imposing tougher punishments to set an example.
If you are looking for expert legal advice regarding corporate fraud visit http://www.dpp-law.com/criminal-defence/