Exposing the Corporate Criminal: An Exercise in Corporate Transparency

• Author: Miriam Weismann
• Pages: 1-10

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C 1

EXPOSING THE

CORPORATE CRIMINAL

AN EXERCISE IN

CORPORATE

TRANSPARENCY

I. Understanding the Reasons Why: It Matters to the

Jury

The apparent ease by which corporations manage to engage in undetected crimi-

nality is a fu nction of the regulator y framework of government-sanctioned self-

regulation. Af ter corporations emerged in the th century a s the dominant form of

economic organization, the debate about how to regul ate closely followed. The cre-

ation of the Securities a nd Exchange Commission (SEC) in , in response to t he

uncontrolled corporate debacles of the s, provided not only a regulatory organi-

zation to supervise t he conduct of issuers, but a policy organiz ation as well. One of

the most signif icant policies promulgated by the SEC and Congress i s the belief that

corporations are best regu lated through t he model of self-regulation and min imal

regulatory inter ference.

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