This doesn't affect you so you don't need to read it.
CORPORATE CRIMINALS
This list uses the narrowest and most conservative of definitions: companies that have pleaded guilty or no contest to crimes and have been fined. White-collar crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined. Corporate crime is often violent crime - the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice.
A selection of the top 100 corporate criminals from the 1990s:
1) F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $500 million
The Swiss pharmaceutical giant, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a record $500 million criminal fine for leading a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in the United States and elsewhere. The conspiracy lasted from 1990 -1999.
5) Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $125 million
Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in connection with the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The company was assessed a $125 million criminal fine. Approximately 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled from the Valdez, fouling 700 miles of Alaska shoreline, killing birds and fish, and destroying the way of life of thousands of Native Americans.
11) Pacific Corporation
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $37 million
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation pleaded guilty to 18 felonies, was fined $37 million, and was placed on five years probation. The plea agreement, cut with the U.S. Attorney in Colorado, capped a six-year investigation of the nation's largest producer of laminated structural wood panels. Dave Horan, a former Louisiana-Pacific supervisor at the Montrose, Colorado facility, filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that he had been fired because he refused to tamper with the Montrose mill's pollution monitoring equipment. The investigation expanded to include both environmental and consumer fraud violations.
15) Genentech Inc.
Type of Crime: Food and drug
Criminal Fine: $30 million
Genentech Inc., the San Francisco-based biotech and pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty to marketing to doctors one of its most lucrative prescription drugs, Protropin, for uses which had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
17) Summitville Consolidated Mining Co. Inc.
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $20 million
The company pleaded guilty to 40 counts of violating the Clean Water Act and other federal statutes at its Summitville Gold Mine operation in southwestern Colorado from 1984 to 1992. Summitville, which opened in 1986, introduced a technology called "cyanide leaching" to extract gold from ore. The cyanide waste that was left over was supposed to be stored in lined and covered ponds to prevent contact with local animals which can die if they drink the water. However, the cyanide solution did not stay in the ponds but leaked through the lining into nearby creeks. By 1990, a 16-mile stretch of the Alamosa River was biologically dead.
19) Rockwell International Corporation
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $18.5 million
Rockwell International Corporation pleaded guilty to ten counts of environmental crimes at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Boulder, Colorado. Federal officials charged that Rockwell illegally stored and treated hazardous wastes generated during the production of plutonium "triggers" and other components of nuclear weapons at Rocky Flats.
21) Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $18 million
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., one of the world's largest passenger cruise lines, pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts and agreed to pay a record $18 million criminal fine for dumping waste oil, hazardous chemicals and lying to the U.S. Coast Guard. Royal Caribbean admitted that it routinely dumped waste oil from its fleet of cruise ships. The company also pleaded guilty to the unprecedented charge that it deliberately dumped into U.S. harbours and coastal areas many other types of pollutants, including hazardous chemicals from photo processing equipment, dry cleaning shops and printing presses
30) Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)
Type of Crime: Financial
Criminal Fine: $10 million
Two BCCI units pleaded guilty to 29 counts of laundering illegal drug profits. At the time of the indictment, Justice Department officials called the BCCI prosecution "the most important money laundering case in U.S. history." Among the bank's customers was Manuel Noriega.
34) General Electric
Type of Crime: Fraud
Criminal Fine: $9.5 million
General Electric Company pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the federal government of $26.5 million in the sale of military equipment to Israel. This involved diverting millions of dollars to a former Israeli Air Force General to assist GE in securing favourable treatment in connection with the F-16 program.
39) Colonial Pipeline Company
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $7 million
Colonial Pipeline Company, the operator of the largest hazardous liquid pipeline in the world, pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with a spill of almost one million gallons of oil into the Reedy River in South Carolina. Colonial is owned by several of the world's largest oil companies. Shareholders include Mobil, Texaco and Amoco. Colonial Pipeline acknowledged that its actions led to the spill of about 960,000 gallons of diesel fuel affecting a 23-mile segment of the river. The spill killed about 35,000 fish and also affected wildlife such as beaver, muskrat, and turtles, which died as a result of direct contact with the spilled oil.