But the chances of a non-executive director having to fork out for corporate wrongdoing are tiny.
It's one thing to prosecute corporate wrongdoing, as with Enron, quite another to prosecute for political purposes.
Because some of the "reforms" Washington may hastily enact to "prevent corporate wrongdoing" could do immense harm to the economy.
First, the history of corporate wrongdoing shows that whistleblowers rarely come forward.
Holder also explained how an Obama administration might handle the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, the Justice Department, and investigations of corporate wrongdoing.
Pensions, particularly public pensions, are forever claiming to be concerned with issues of national significance, such as conflicts of interest in Wall Street investment research and corporate wrongdoing.
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According to a survey by whistleblower protection law firm Labaton Sucharov, 81 percent of Americans do not believe the government has done enough to stop corporate wrongdoing.
One option is to have no fines at all for corporate wrongdoing, and to rely instead on market forces to impose the costs that keep firms in line.
"While KBR continues to assure the American people that it has completed its own investigations and has found no evidence of corporate wrongdoing, the emerging facts prove otherwise, " Casey said.
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Were they also major facilitators of Enron's corporate wrongdoing?
Stockholder derivative suits are intended to allow a corporation to recover funds from unfaithful directors, not to punish directors for the wrongdoing of corporate employees.
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So I would encourage all of you, be the first to detect and address wrongdoing by the corporate fiduciaries to your fund.
To date, as unbelievable as its seems, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures private corporations, has never undertaken a forensic investigation aimed at ferreting out wrongdoing involving vendors to any corporate pension it has overtaken.
This agency has never investigated possible wrongdoing before using government funds to bail out a corporate pension.
Conclusion The result of wrongdoing by vendors to pensions is that, with respect to corporate pensions, employee retirement security is being undermined.
Corporate plans: The Department of Labor, the agency charged with regulating corporate pensions, generally lacks knowledge of the money management and securities industries, has offered little meaningful guidance to corporate sponsors on these issues and has been even less effective in investigating wrongdoing and enforcing the laws.
The inference clearly being that those intent on wrongdoing are prepared to tolerate the high-sounding and well-meaning corporate governance restrictions only to the point where such regulations do not inhibit the making of a buck or the avoidance of a loss.
It also points to breakdowns in corporate culture as being at fault, with many of those surveyed fearing retribution from employers should they report wrongdoing.
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This is because breaches of fiduciary duty are difficult for clients to prove without a corporate insider or whistleblower providing a roadmap and regulators have been generally ineffectual in ferreting out pension-related wrongdoing.
CEOs and other corporate leaders should lose bonuses, other pay and even their jobs when their company engages in fraud or other serious wrongdoing.
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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has imposed enormous costs on businesses, particularly small ones, yet these paperwork burdens have not prevented corporate fraud. (And this bureaucratic delight didn't ban corporate executives from lucratively backdating stock options, thereby generating huge gains with virtually no risk.) Those intent on wrongdoing will easily find ways around paper barriers.
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