The deputy attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, recently addressed a need to hold white collar criminals responsible for their crimes. She has stepped up the rhetoric against corporate executives who commit crimes by demanding that prosecutors punish individuals instead of just the corporation. If history is any lesson on the matter, her rhetoric will remain just rhetoric. An Ongoing Problem The problem with the current financial regulations is that it does stop corporations from committing fraud. When a bank, such as Credit Suisse, pleads guilty to a crime like helping Americans avoid taxes, they are not punished with criminal charges or anything that would actually stop them from committing the same act. A financial institution is typically …show more content…
Ms. Yates has argued that punishing individuals is one of the most effective ways of actually causing a corporation to rethink their actions, but this is also difficult to do. When a corporation is investigated, the Justice Department requires them to hand over any documents related to the case and the individuals who were involved in specific crimes. Obviously, the individuals involved are less inclined for this to happen and are often in management roles at the company. In the average case, the corporation and the individuals at fault admit to wrongdoing—as Credit Suisse and five other global banks did in May of 2014--, but they do not disclose the names of the individual people responsible. At this point in the game, the Justice Department faces a dilemma. There are very few things that they can do to the corporation to get those names without harming the company 's ability to operate. If the Justice Department chooses to increase the pressure on the corporation, the management may choose to take the case to trial rather than settle out of court. This would potentially result to lower settlement fines paid by the government, operation problems for the company or a not guilty