The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s a fascinating resource: Corporate Crime Reporter’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990’s

Despite the fact that the 90’s were over more than 6 years ago, the report is still a pretty interesting read:

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 5 firms topping the list (apparently ranked in terms of the size of financial penalties)…
1) F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.
2) Daiwa Bank Ltd.
3) BASF Aktiengesellschaft
4) SGL Carbon Aktiengesellschaft (SGL AG)
5) Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping

Actually, what’s most surprising to me about the list is the number of firms I’ve never heard of (or only vaguely recall hearing of). And don’t bother looking for Wal-Mart: it’s not listed. Nor is Enron, of course (since its troubles started after the 90’s). In fact, here’s a fun classroom activity for you business (or business ethics) profs out there: get your class to name 10 “corporate criminals” from the 90’s, and then see how few of them are listed in this report. Then get the class to figure out why.

Some relevant reading:
Corporate Crime Reporter (Magazine)
Corporate Crime (Law and Society Series)
Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime

[Thanks to Joe Heath for bringing the CCR & its report to my attention]