Usually under the bizarre illogic of corporate law, penalties for crimes committed by executives that damage a corporation are paid by ... the corporation itself. In effect, the victim itself is punished for the crime.
Judge Rakoff may be challenging this in the BoF-Merrill bonuses case. This may turn out to be interesting: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125294493976909051.html -----------------------------------snip Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff rejected a proposed $33 million settlement of allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bank of America Corp. "materially lied" in shareholder communications about bonuses to employees of Merrill Lynch & Co. Instead, Judge Rakoff set a Feb. 1 trial date on the allegations in his New York courtroom. [...] In effect, Judge Rakoff found, the settlement would force the victims of the alleged misstatements--Bank of America shareholders--to pay an additional $33 million. "It does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality, in that it proposes that the shareholders who were the victims of the bank's alleged misconduct now pay the penalty for that misconduct," the judge wrote. The judge has noted that SEC policy directs that culpable executives be punished for misleading shareholders, something the commission had not sought in this case. -raghu. -- "When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction." - Steven Wright _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
