£1million-plus corporate fines

[james armstrong]

“Fined £1,000,000” , “Fined 
£2,000,000” and  “Fined £6,000,000”,“Fined
£6,700,000 (reduced from £8,000,000 )” and “Fined £30million (reduced to  £5million on appeal)”

“ Fined £9million reduced to £4million on appeal”    Corporations incurring these giant fines
are ‘not criminals’  says Office of Fair
Trading. Are they ‘Crooks’  or what? 

Compare the publicity surrounding the theft of  £2.3million known as a the ‘Great Train
Robbery ‘ and the lack of publicity, comment and apparent opprobrium
surrounding these and the following corporate breaches of the Competition Act
prosecuted by OFT - 

 

“Fined - Manchester United £1.5million,”  “Fined - Arriva/First Group  £200,000” , “Fined - Argos £17million”,(Yes, £17million!) 
“Fined-  JJB Sports £6 million,”  “Fined  The
Football Association - £158,000” , “Fined Umbro Holdings - £5milllion” , “Fined
 Balfour Beatty Construction -  £5million “ 
,  “Fined Kier (Construction)   £17million reduced to £1million”, “Fined Try   £8million reduced to £1million”, “Fined - Wilmott
Dixon Construction £4,534, 760....

 In total  Office of Fair Trading have imposed fines
of  some £100 million on 180 companies ,
some of them well known names including 104 companies fined  £57million for rigging bids for public
service contracts.     

The sums of money 
involved in these   financial
wrongdoing in many instances dwarfed  the
proceeds of the train robbers.  Wheras
the  robbers were jailed , corporations
are   not liable to imprisonment as individuals are.  It is 
not easy to compare fines imposed by OFT corporations and prison
sentences imposed in criminal courts on individuals. .  

What can be said is that 
the amount of publicity they attract , and the public’s  awareness is low. 

If the corporations  are not criminals what are they?     This suggests to date the English language
has failed to find an appropriate word  better
than ‘crooks’ to describe corporations who because of  gross 
breaches of  public trust  fall foul of government regulators.  Perhaps the best we can do is describe them
as public predators?    

To come, further £100million   fines imposed by  Financial Services Authority on banks and
financial services industry – What? You didn’t know? .  
James 


 		 	   		  
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