Corporate corruption starts right at the top

We are embroiled in a global epidemic of fraud, with much of it unreported. It will continue until those responsible, and not just shareholders, are made accountable.

Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries - those with supposedly "good governance".

Poor-country governments probably accept more bribes and commit more offences, but rich countries host the global companies that carry out the largest offences. Money talks, and it is corrupting politics and markets all over the world.

Hardly a day passes without a new story of malfeasance. Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines in the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes or outright embezzlement by chief executives.

An enormous alleged insider trading ring is on trial in New York, and has implicated some leading financial industry figures.

There is, however, scant accountability. Two years after the biggest financial crisis in history, fuelled by unscrupulous behaviour by the biggest banks on Wall Street, not a single financial leader has faced jail.

When companies are fined for malfeasance, their shareholders, not their chief executives and managers, pay the price.

The fines are always a tiny fraction of the ill-gotten gains, implying to Wall Street that corrupt practices have a solid rate of return. Corruption also pays in American politics.

Rick Scott, the current governor of Florida, was the chief executive of a major healthcare company known as Columbia/HCA.

The company was charged with defrauding the US government by overbilling for reimbursement, and eventually pleaded guilty to 14 felonies, paying a fine of US$1.7 billion (Dh6.24bn).

The FBI's investigation forced Mr Scott out of his job. But a decade after the company's guilty pleas, Mr Scott is back, this time as a "free-market" Republican politician.

When Barack Obama wanted somebody to help with the bailout of the US car industry, he turned to a Wall Street "fixer", Steven Rattner, even though Mr Obama knew Mr Rattner was under investigation for giving kickbacks to government officials.

After Mr Rattner finished his work at the White House, he settled the case with a fine of a few million dollars.

But why stop at governors or presidential advisers? Dick Cheney, the former vice president, came to the White House after serving as the chief executive of Halliburton.

During his tenure, the company engaged in illegal bribery of Nigerian officials to enable the company to win access to that country's oil fields - access worth billions of dollars.

When Nigeria's government charged Halliburton with bribery, the company settled the case out of court, paying a fine of $35 million. Of course, there were no consequences whatsoever for Mr Cheney. The news barely made a ripple in the US media.

Impunity is widespread - indeed, most corporate crimes go unnoticed. The few that are noticed typically end with a slap on the wrist, with the company - meaning its shareholders - picking up a modest fine.

The real culprits at the top of these companies rarely need to worry. Even when firms pay big fines, their chief executives remain in the job.

The explosion of corruption - in the US, Europe, China, India, Africa, Brazil and beyond - raises a host of challenging questions about its causes.

Corporate corruption is out of control for two main reasons.

First, big companies are now multinational, while governments remain national. Big companies are so financially powerful that governments are afraid to take them on.

Second, companies are the major funders of political campaigns in places such as the US, while politicians themselves are often part-owners, or at least the silent beneficiaries of corporate profits. About half of the US congressmen are millionaires.

As a result, politicians often look the other way when corporate behaviour crosses the line. Even if governments try to enforce the law, companies have armies of lawyers to run circles around them. The result is a culture of impunity, based on the well-proven expectation that corporate crime pays.

Given the close connections of wealth and power with the law, pulling back corporate crime will be an enormous struggle. Fortunately, the rapid and pervasive flow of information nowadays could act as a kind of deterrent.

Corruption thrives in the dark, yet more information than ever comes to light through e-mail and blogs, as well as social networks.

We will also need a new kind of politician leading a new kind of political campaign, one based on free online media rather than paid media. When politicians can emancipate themselves from corporate donations, they will regain the ability to control corporate abuses.

So the next time you hear about a corruption scandal in Africa or other poor region, ask where it started and who is doing the corrupting.

Neither the US nor any other "advanced" country should be pointing the finger at poor countries, for it is often the most powerful global companies that have created the problem.

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to the UN secretary general on the millennium development goals

* Project Syndicate