White Collar Crime Ethics

3.1 WHITE COLLAR CRIME

Usually, most of the crime is committed by the persons from the lower class and we rarely heard as well as bother about the crime committed by person from the upper class as they always success in covering their crime using their power, money and connection. The crime which is committed by the person from the upper class is known as the white collar crime, or it is also known as the corporate crime. The reason it call as the white collar crime is because it is a crime which is committed by the high social status person and being respected in the course of their occupation. So, business managers, director or executive is the person whom we will refer in the white collar crime.

Basically, white collar crime is an illegal

So, ethics of the director play an important role and are the root of the matter. They are in the position of trust which being their opportunities to commit crime as they are prone to do that. Well, in the capitalist society, they usually did not give emphasis to the matter of ethics, because they are more focus on their job performance rather than the high ethical standard. They demands on profit maximization and the corporate structure that emphasizes on production deadlines and quota have often created an arena for unethical business practices. In order to solve this problem, corporate leaders which is the directors and top level management should implement the director’s code of ethics with a higher integrity. So, we can conclude that white collar criminal behavior are motivated by greed rather than need as they are full of selfishness as well as individualism.

3.1.1 THE SITUATION OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME IN MALAYSIA

Based on the definition of Clinard and Quinney (1973) (who divided whitecollar crime into occupational crime and corporate crime), some of white-collar crime in Malaysia can be categorized as follows:

Offences Provisions of Law

Criminal breach of trust sect. 405 to 409, Penal

It including with criminal breach of trust, cheating and misappropriation of funds forming the bulk of cases. In 2003, about RM 579 million was involved in 11,714 cases, compared to 4,229 cases (involving RM 153.8 million) in 1994. Fewer cases were recorded in 2004 (9,899 cases) but the amount of losses went up (RM 836.29 million). Referring to KPMG Malaysia Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Survey 2013, out of the total survey respondents, representing 14 industry segments, 48% admitted to having encountered fraud in their organizations during the period from January 2010 to December 2012. This reflected a meager decrease of 1% from 2009 survey hence indicating that fraud is still regarded as a significant problem in their business. Then, the levels of bribery and corruption that have organizations experienced based on the survey resulting on 16% of the respondents reported that their organization has experienced behaviors that are defined as bribery or corruption. Out of 100%, 15% of respondents of those organizations had experienced bribery and corruption involving foreign/