Corporate White-Collar Crime Issues
Beginning with the Enron debacle and culminating in the recent Wall Street implosion, the tolerance of both the public and the government for white collar crime, especially corporate crime, has largely disappeared. Public sentiments are manifested most readily in jury verdicts with significant fines and substantial jail sentences. Corporate executives charged with inflating corporate earnings stand a difficult chance of having their case heard before an impartial jury. This bias has spread beyond cases alleging inflation of corporate earnings, and into nearly every aspect of white collar crime.
The crackdown on corporate crime has also permeated the Justice Department over the last several years evidenced by the creation of federal and state task forces to "restore public and investor confidence in America's corporations." This recent trend in increasingly draconian penalties has prompted the emergence of a "culture of cooperation". Consequently, when representing a corporation in an investigation, probably the most common and most difficult issue that needs to address at the outset is whether to cooperate in the government's investigation. Before any decision is made, however, the corporation must conduct a preliminary investigation into the alleged conduct to determine whether:
- The company actually committed the violation that is the subject of the government's investigation,
- The company has a chance of fighting the allegations, and
- Employees within the company have information to provide to the government about the practices of other companies. In other words is the case defensible?
