Posted on 06/20/2005 5:33:58 AM PDT by OESY
A 9-0 Supreme Court rebuke ought to be a teaching moment. So it is amazing to behold that -- notwithstanding the unanimous recent reversal of its 2002 Arthur Andersen conviction -- the Justice Department may well make the same mistake all over again.
We're referring to the news that Justice may indict the entire KPMG accounting firm for obstruction of justice and the marketing of legally questionable tax shelters. As Andersen's fate made clear, an indictment against a corporation is usually a death sentence, whatever the ultimate legal outcome....
The purpose of criminal law, we had thought, is to punish the guilty and deter future wrongdoing. In KPMG's case, the people responsible for any misdeeds are open to prosecution as individuals and nearly all have already been dismissed by the firm. Most of the 30 partners notified by Justice that they are targets of the investigation have been given the boot....
As for the crimes alleged, it will be up to a jury to decide whether the particular tax shelters sold by KPMG were legal or not. The fact that that is no easy question, given the convoluted IRS tax code with its loopholes and built-in incentives to cheat, is another reason for not issuing a blunderbuss indictment....
A corporate indictment might save Justice the time and long effort of having to prove criminal intent by individuals, but at the price of putting up to 18,200 mostly innocent KPMG employees out of work in the U.S....
A KPMG indictment would also punish its many corporate clients who, thanks to the Andersen assassination, now have only four giant audit firms to choose from. The demise of KPMG would make it three. How that helps the cause of auditing competition, and by extension good corporate governance, is beyond us....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The political will (including ill will, and passiveness of our own party) of our current elected officials IS going to be the root cause of the this great country of ours going deep into the crapper - sooner than later.
It's sad, so very, very sad.
"White collar" criminals are anti-freedom.
How sweet and naive.
You mean it's meant to entrap the innocent and encourage lawbreakers to send in campaign contributions?
I'd say that's accurate. The main purpose of law in this day and age is to protect the political establishment from the people.
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