Get tough on corporate crime
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Monday July 05 2010
THE Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) was established in 2000. Since 2001, the office has referred only five cases to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Not one person has gone to prison.
What does that statistic tell us about white-collar crime in Ireland? That it rarely happens? Far from it. According to Detective Sergeant Clodagh White of the garda fraud squad intelligence unit, solicitors and other professionals made 14,400 confidential reports about suspected offences last year. But few prosecutions are brought, and only a handful succeed.
These facts will reinforce the anger of those who think the authorities "soft" on white-collar crime and who bitterly compare our record with those of other countries, especially the United States, famous for the severity of the sentences imposed for fraud.
Last Saturday, lawyers and gardai attended an event at which Kevin Prendergast, the ODCE's corporate compliance manager, said that there has never been a successful prosecution for insider trading or market abuse in Ireland. Convictions will be difficult to obtain because of the "incredibly high" proof thresholds.
This state of affairs is simply intolerable. In the first place it is an affront to justice that while people go to jail for petty offences fraudsters remain unscathed. Secondly, financial misbehaviour threatens the entire system.
Clearly those fighting white-collar crime are handicapped by paucity of resources. But we must ask ourselves whether they suffer more from lack of a civic ethic and political will.
