In the UK one of the most well-known cases was that of Barlow Clowes. Between October 1983 and May 1988 about 11,000, mainly elderly, small investors entrusted their money to Barlow Clowes International, the vast majority of whom were persuaded to do so by misrepresentation that their funds would be securely invested in gilts (government bonds). In fact, very little, if any, of that money was invested in gilts. Investors’ moneys were stolen and used to buy houses, farms, yachts, cars, antique furniture, a vineyard and shares in private and public companies. In 1992, after a trial lasting 112 days Peter Clowes got 10 years in prison. This case is still relevant in that it was only in 2011 (7 February 2011) that the case was finally declared closed when HM Treasury announced it had finally recovered £125 million of the £150 million defrauded from investors. John Lea, A Brief Introduction to Corporate Crime
For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Charles E Wilson, 1953
Coke Further Undermines Colombian Investigation: Employers led by a Coca-Cola executive [Ed Potter] stopped the International Labour Organisation examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia. The Sydney Morning Herald 6th June 2007; online report 14th June 2007
Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones the direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favours, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that? Elizabeth Warren
The credit card system as a whole is a huge threat to our freedom. But the really great threat isn’t so much these corporations as our nonchalance in the face of the power they have over us. It’s out indifference, our negligence, our ignorance, that gives them their power and makes them dangerous to us. Daniel Gross, computer database specialist
Today’s consumers are eager to become loyal fans of companies that respect purposeful capitalism. They are not opposed to companies making a profit; indeed, they may even be investors in these companies – but at the core, they want more empathic, enlightened corporations that seek a balance between profit and purpose. Simon Mainwaring
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent. Gore Vidal
The American press, with a very few exceptions is a kept press. Kept by the big corporations the way a whore is kept by a rich man. Theodore Dreiser
Fascism: that’s what we’ve had in the United States. We’ve had a union of the government and corporate power ever since the beginning of this country. There’s an element of fascism in that. Howard Zinn
The message was: US corporations have the right to pollute the entire planet. The people and the environment don’t matter. Bianca Jagger 2001
All I ask for is an unfair advantage. Hank Greenberg, CEO Marsh & McLennnan
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. Jack Welch
Paying bribes was customary in nearly all business units of Siemens. Reinhard Siekaczek
The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything. Steven van Zandt
The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Me
The United Fruit brings in Bernays and he basically understood that what the United Fruit Company had to do was change this from being a popularly elected government that was doing some things that were good for the people there into this being close into this being very close to the American shore, a threat to American democracy. Being at a time in the Cold War when Americans responded to issues of the red scare and what communism might do. He was trying to transform this and brilliantly transform it into an issue of a communist threat close to our shores. Larry Tye, journalist Boston Globe
Olympus: ‘... facing a potential scandal. The company fired its president and CEO ...’ Storyville: 1.7 Billion Dollar Fraud: Full Exposure: The Gods of Mount Olympus, American news, BBC 2015
‘They wrecked the company.’ ibid. CEO Woodford
By the 1980s Olympus is a multinational corporation. ibid.
Yamaguchi begins his research and discovers that Olympus spent $700 million acquiring two defunct companies in 2008. Yamaguchi also discovers that Olympus paid out an $680 million financial advisory fee for the acquisition of Gyrus. ibid.
Woodford decides to confront Kikukawa and arranges a lunch meeting. ibid.
11th October 2011: Following Price Waterhouse Cooper’s report, Woodford demands Kikukawa’ and Mori’s resignations. ibid.
14th October 2011: The board vote unanimously to dismiss Woodford. ibid.
The State of West Virginia issued the DuPont company a permit for them to run their contaminated waste water down through two farms here down into this stream of water. Storyville: Poisoning America: The Devil We Know, BBC 2018
In 1945 Dupont began making Teflon. Today, one of the chemicals used to make it is in the blood of 99% of all Americans. This is where it began. ibid.
DuPoint Reassigns 50 Women Workers In Chemical Case: Substance, Produced by 3M, Was Linked During Test. ibid. The Wall Street Journal 8 April 1981
‘The documents in this case they really tell the story about what the company knew.’ ibid.
In 2001, Dupont settled with the Tennants for an undisclosed sum. Mr Tennant was diagnosed with cancer before suffering a fatal heart attack in 2009 at the age of 67. His wife died of cancer two years later. ibid.
‘They called this Florine chemical ‘the devil’s piss’ it was so potent.’ ibid.
3M pledged to phase out C8 by the end of 2002. That very same year, DuPont began producing C8 at its plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina. ibid.
In 2002 the US Environmental Protection Agency launched a priority review to determine whether C8 should be regulated. ibid.
The US Environmental Protection Agency fined DuPont $16.5 million dollars for failing to report the health risks related to C8 exposure. ibid.
Gen X is just one of 88,000 unregulated chemicals used in everyday products. ibid.
Carlos Ghosn’s great escape: escaped without a passport and was still under house arrest. Storyville: Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight, news, BBC 2021
Fugitive businessman [Nissan] Carlos Ghosn has been banned from leaving Lebanon after he fled there from Japan to avoid trial for financial misconduct. ibid.
Carlos the cost-cutter was seen as a turnaround success. ibid. dude
I was the victim of a plot, and I spent a lot to try to understand why. ibid. Ghosn
He really ended up getting caught in this conflict between France and Japan about the future of Nissan. ibid. dude
The [Robert] Maxwell connection demonstrated how quickly some predatory Western businessmen linked up with proto-oligarchs from Eastern Europe to internationalise the asset-stripping of the new democracies. Maxwell was in the vanguard of a criminal industry that would run out of control in the 1990s – money laundering. Together with Prime Minister Lukanov, Maxwell arranged the transfer of $2 billion from Bulgaria into Western tax havens – subsequent Bulgarian governments were unable to trace what happened to this cash, although we do know that it did not end up in the Daily Mirror’s pension fund from which Maxwell was also stealing hundreds of millions of pounds at the same time. Misha Glenny, McMafia
They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little children, but they were deaf and blind and callous to the consequences of their greed. Devoid of any ennobling thought or aspiration, they grovelled on the filthy ground, tearing up the flowers to get at the worms. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Consider the so-called corporate scandals of the early 2000s. The crimes committed by Enron included hidden partnerships, disguised debt, and the manipulation of energy markets. Henry Blodger of Merrill Lynch and Jack Grubman of Salomon Smith Barney wrote glowing research reports of companies they knew to be junk. Sam Waksal dumped his ImClone stock when he got early word of a damaging report from the Food and Drug Administration; his friend Martha Stewart also dumped her shares, then lied about the reason. WorldCom and Global Crossing fabricated billions of dollars in revenue to pump up their stock prices. One group of mutual fund companies let preferred customers trade at preferred prices, and another group was charged with hidden management fees. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
If you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference. ibid.