Corporate Crimes And The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Corporate crimes happen when the business enterprise use legitimate and illegitimate business practices. Crimes committed by the corporate enterprises vary and includes fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, environmental damage, or even homicide when agents of the company commit criminal acts to benefit the company or its shareholders. However, according to Alder et al. (2013), multinational corporate crimes are a widespread and daily problem, so politicians have taken the opportunity to implement tougher provision and punishment to protect the public and their workers from corporate crimes through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The focuses of these Acts are to protect consumers and improve accountability and transparency
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(2013) as abuse of corporations became apparent, the courts knew it was inevitable to curb corporate power and needed to regulate this power through social control. As corporations became decentralized and became larger, there was little oversight and monitoring of their employees, which brought about the need to hold management criminal responsible. However, corporations argued that they should be given a break when they try to comply with the law even if they failed to do so. Therefore, the government decided regulatory laws were in order to get companies to comply with the law instead of punishing them. This influenced illegal corporate behavior, so the courts proposed that there be some threat of punishment while providing leniency for organizations that willingly cooperate with authorities to reduce crime within their organizations and due diligence by creating hiring and ethical guidelines for their staff (pp. …show more content…
On a civil note, legislation has worked to put bills in place to protect the public from corporate fraud such as monopolies used to manipulating prices for the businesses own interests. Regulatory agencies such as the EPA, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Security Exchange Commission are some of the agencies that regulate corporations. Criminal liability has also taken the place of some civil issues when negligence on the part of the officials since their conduct can cause serious harm or even death. Nevertheless, as corporations have grown, abuse within this field is attributed to entities that have gained considerable power over the global market, allowing abuse with very little
(2013) as abuse of corporations became apparent, the courts knew it was inevitable to curb corporate power and needed to regulate this power through social control. As corporations became decentralized and became larger, there was little oversight and monitoring of their employees, which brought about the need to hold management criminal responsible. However, corporations argued that they should be given a break when they try to comply with the law even if they failed to do so. Therefore, the government decided regulatory laws were in order to get companies to comply with the law instead of punishing them. This influenced illegal corporate behavior, so the courts proposed that there be some threat of punishment while providing leniency for organizations that willingly cooperate with authorities to reduce crime within their organizations and due diligence by creating hiring and ethical guidelines for their staff (pp. …show more content…
On a civil note, legislation has worked to put bills in place to protect the public from corporate fraud such as monopolies used to manipulating prices for the businesses own interests. Regulatory agencies such as the EPA, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Security Exchange Commission are some of the agencies that regulate corporations. Criminal liability has also taken the place of some civil issues when negligence on the part of the officials since their conduct can cause serious harm or even death. Nevertheless, as corporations have grown, abuse within this field is attributed to entities that have gained considerable power over the global market, allowing abuse with very little