Getting Even Tougher on Corporate Crime
By
Phil Mattera, Dirt
Diggers Digest
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West Virginia’s coal country is not very fond of the Environmental Protection Agency these days, but another part of the federal government — the Justice Department — is viewed more sympathetically.
The reason is that Don Blankenship, the most reviled man in the state, is being prosecuted.
A federal grand jury recently handed up an indictment with four criminal counts against Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, for conspiring with other managers to violate safety laws on a massive scale, thereby creating the conditions that led to the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster, in which 29 miners were killed.
It is a rarity for criminal charges to reach the CEO
level, and if any chief executive deserves such special treatment, Blankenship
is the one. The indictment paints a picture of a manager who was utterly
contemptuous of federal safety regulations and thus of the safety and well
being of his employees. He is said to have called the use of workers for safety
compliance “ridiculous” and “crazy.”
What’s really crazy is that Blankenship is not facing even more serious charges. He could theoretically spend as much as 31 years in prison, but if convicted he would likely serve much less time. The indictment makes a compelling case for the conspiracy charges, but they also detail activity that could easily be construed as homicide or at least negligent homicide. In fact, back in 2010 there were calls for Blankenship to be charged with murder.
Blankenship is emblematic of a type of business
misconduct that brings about serious harm or even death to workers, consumers
or the general public. This kind of brazen corporate behavior originated in the
19th Century and persisted in the 20th, especially in industries such as
tobacco and asbestos. A new investigation by the Center for Public
Integrity documents steps by the petroleum industry beginning in the late 1940s
to suppress evidence linking benzene, an ingredient in gasoline, to leukemia.
It was not long ago that business apologists were
claiming that such egregious cases of corporate irresponsibility were a thing
of the past. We were made to believe that Big Business had cleaned up its act
and was now taking the lead in promoting ethical and sustainable practices.
That notion took a beating in 2010, which saw not only
the Upper Big Branch explosion but also the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the
Gulf of Mexico brought about by the negligence of BP, Transocean and
Halliburton.
This year corporate wrong-doing is once again in full
bloom. At the center of it has been General Motors, the company whose dangerous
Corvair compact gave rise to the modern public interest movement. Fifty years
later, the new, post-bankruptcy GM is again facing charges of endangering lives
through foolish cost-cutting measures.
GM, however, is not alone this time. We’re seeing
negligent behavior by other automakers, including the Japanese, and now a
scandal is growing over the practices of airbag supplier Takata, which is allegedto have covered up evidence that its
products were rupturing and spewing metal debris at drivers. Now the company is
resisting calls in the U.S. for a nationwide recall.
For a long time, the discussion on business misconduct
has focused on the need to bring criminal charges against top executives.
That’s a worthy goal, but we need to give more attention to the nature of the
charges. A CEO who has knowingly placed human lives in danger should be
prosecuted as toughly as street criminals who do the same. Potential penalties
along the lines of life imprisonment may be the only thing that can deter the
Don Blankenships of the world.