{"id":69357,"date":"2016-02-08T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=69357"},"modified":"2016-02-05T12:41:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T12:41:38","slug":"why-prosecutors-dont-target-thieving-ceos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/02\/why-prosecutors-dont-target-thieving-ceos\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Prosecutors Don\u2019t Target Thieving CEOs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letting executives off the hook undermines our moral authority, but winning cases is notoriously tricky.<\/em><\/p>\n

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a stinging broadside against federal prosecutors on Friday [29 Jan 2016], charging U.S. courts with throwing the book at mixed-up teenagers, while letting wealthy corporate executives who commit much larger and sometimes deadly crimes off with essentially no chance of punishment.<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/a>

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) takes part in the Washington Ideas Forum in Washington, October 1, 2015. Jonathan Ernst\u2014Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

In a new report, Sen. Warren\u2019s office makes the case that CEOs and other top executives simply don\u2019t face the same legal consequences as ordinary Americans, releasing a list<\/a> of what it claims are 20 examples of corporate criminal and civil cases that prosecutors failed to pursue to the full extent of the law last year.<\/p>\n

Among the cases: scandals ranging from General Motors\u2019 years\u2019 long cover up of ignition switch problems to currency manipulation by large banks (including Citigroup and J.P. Morgan), to a mine explosion that killed 29 people \u2014 the only instance of misconduct which led to a conviction of a corporate executive<\/a>, according to Warren.<\/p>\n

The problem, the senator argues, isn\u2019t the way U.S. laws are written. Rather it\u2019s that, despite repeated promises, the Obama Administration hasn\u2019t made prosecuting corporate bigwigs a priority. She goes so far as to make the case that such selective application of the law undermines the government\u2019s moral authority: \u201cIf justice means a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but it means nothing more than a sideways glance at a CEO who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars, then the promise of equal justice under the law has turned into a lie,\u201d Warren charges in the report.<\/p>\n

As a moralist, Warren may well have point. But, as politicians tend to do, she is also over-simplifying. Many prosecutors would love nothing more than to cuff a dishonest Wall Street trader or arrogant CEO, for the same reasons as Warren or even simply to burnish their resumes. For proof, just look at the career of former New York governor Elliot Spitzer, who rose to prominence due to his tough-on-finance record, or for that matter, the plot of Showtime\u2019s new drama \u2018Billions<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

But white collar prosecutions are notoriously expensive and risky. After all, fat-cat CEOs often come flanked with expensive lawyers and their cases often hinge on mind-numbingly arcane legal principles.<\/p>\n

Even the most vigorous prosecutors can fall victims to such difficulties. Starting in 2009, Manhattan U.S. attorney Preet Bharara<\/a> racked up a string of insider trading convictions against Wall Street executives, at one point winning 85 straight cases<\/a>. But even Bharara\u2019s run of victories eventually stopped short of what many considered to be their ultimate target,<\/a> hedge fund magnate Steven A. Cohen. What is more, a number of Bharara\u2019s most significant convictions were eventually overturned when a Federal appeals court unexpectedly re-interpreted the contours of insider trading law, setting defendants free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just a problem in the U.S. In fact, earlier this week, U.K. prosecutors, after winning an initial conviction in their quest to prosecute bankers accused of fixing LIBOR \u2014 a key benchmark central to financial markets \u2014 failed to secure any further wins. While prosecutors had seemed confident in their case, the jury took just two days acquit all six additional defendants. The acquittal led to questions about whether the U.K.\u2019s Serious Fraud Office \u2014 which had handled the prosecutions \u2014 will survive the humiliation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this isn\u2019t to say corporate malfeasance isn\u2019t indeed going unpunished, or that Warren is wrong to use her bully pulpit to call attention to it. But the situation won\u2019t be easy to fix.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 time.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a stinging broadside against federal prosecutors on Friday [29 Jan 2016], charging U.S. courts with throwing the book at mixed-up teenagers, while letting wealthy corporate executives who commit much larger and sometimes deadly crimes off with essentially no chance of punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}