Comparison Writing Assignment

Posted by Winnie Melda on December 4th, 2018

                   White collar crimes in the United States vs. India

White collar crimes refer to the illegal acts that involve deceit, concealment or violation of trust and do not involve or have the threat of physical force or violence. The acts get committed by persons as well as organizations to obtain money, property or services and also avoiding payment or loss of money or services, or securing personal or business advantage.  The crimes include financial crimes, abstract crimes, crimes by or targeting corporations, criminal organizations or enterprises, cyber crimes, crimes by the rich, and corporate or professional malfeasance (Cliff & Desilets, 2014). An individual of any age group, income level, profession, occupation, or tenure of employment can be a perpetrator of a white collar crime, and also, can be a victim. These crimes are rapidly increasing in the contemporary globalized world; hence cross-comparative cultural studies continually become necessary.

Comparison between white-collar crimes in the United States and India

According to Friedrichs (2009), white-collar crimes in the United States result in an overall economic loss of an estimated trillion annually. The two main characteristics of white collar criminals in the United States is irresponsibility and antisocial behavior that is not normal as compared to other white collar persons. According to Shover & Hochstetler, (2005), studies indicated that between 1995 – 2002, the percent of male persons sentenced in the United States for committing white collar crimes was 72.7 percent. Hence, men offenders are the majority in committing white collar crimes. The same studies indicated that in the United States, approximately 32.3 percent of the total number of persons convicted with white collar crimes belonged to the African American and Hispanic races. The studies also indicated that in the United States, the average age of individual committing white collar crimes was 44 years, with the majority at the age of 31 to 40 years. In the study, among those who got sentenced for the crimes 30.2 percent had, at least, some college education, 28.7 percent were high school graduates, 19.5 percent were college graduates, and only 17.1 percent had not reached high school level. The study also claims that an average total of 8, 205 white collar crimes cases got reported in the United States between the years 1995-2002 while an average of 2, 600 street offender cases got reported. In the United States, corporate crimes are some of the frequent white collar cases that got reported. In India cases of corruption, money laundering, bribery, as well as regulatory breaches, resulted in economic losses in companies amounting to more that 10 percent revenue loss.

 White collar crime cases reported in India in the year 2011 increased from 71 percent in 2010 to 108 percent (Sivakumar & Subbalakshmi, 2011). The cases included fake recruitment racketeers, ATM fraudsters, perpetrators of lottery fraud, travel agents, property dealers, agents promising false court affidavits and death certificates, and fake friendship clubs getting operated by both men and women. All these crimes got committed by individuals in all professions. For instance, health care practitioners got involved in cases relating to the issuance of fake certificates, executing illegal abortions, selling out sample drugs and medicine and even adulterated drugs and medicines to patients. In engineering, numerous cases got reported relating manipulated eligibility certificates. The corporate sector had a variety of crimes such as illegal contracts, unfair labor practices, bribing of public officials, combination and conspiracies of trade restraints, and selling of adulterated drugs. Corruption and fraud cases in India have even involved huge companies and organizations such as 2G telecom scam, Adarsh Society scam, and CWG fraud. These cases affected India’s reputation negatively in the international society. Tax evasion is widespread in India and gets attributed to the complex tax laws of India. The law states that tax evasion is illegal whereas tax avoidance is not. Tax evasion gets defined as the non-payment of tax that is due for payment, whereas tax avoidance gets defined as the organized distribution of a person’s income so that it does not incur tax liability legally and lawfully.

Examples of White collar crimes in the United States and India

United States

The white collar crime got committed by Bernard Madoff, who had worked as a lifeguard so as to save money to start security firms. Madoff later created the massive Ponzi scheme in which encouraged investments from wealthy individuals and corporate all around the globe. However, he used the investment, rather than using profits to pay off existing investors and also keeping the difference for personal use. First, he tapped money from country clubs and charity dinners on what got referred to as the Jewish circuit of wealthy New York Jewish entrepreneur. Madoff got sought out by investors who regarded him highly. Madoff and his team then went to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to secure investments. Madoff got discovered in 2008 when investors wanted to pull out billion from the fund. Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009, to eleven count information charging securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, investment adviser fraud, false statements, false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and money laundering. He got sentenced in a Manhattan federal court to 150 years in prison for committing the crime that resulted in losses of investor’s money amounting to billions of dollars. Madoff also got ordered to forfeit a total of 0, 799, 000, 000 as part of the sentence. This amount represented the total proceeds of and property involved in some of Madoff’s crimes.

India

An example is the case of Sheetal Mafatlal, a business lady, prominent socialite as well as the president of Mafatlal Luxury in which she allegedly evaded customs duty in flying to India from abroad. Mafatlal tried to avoid duty by declining to declare Rs 51 lakh worth of jewelry. Sheetal got arrested at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport after a disgruntled partner reported her. Later after a search on the contents of her baggage, diamond-studded gold bangles, pendants, chains, pearls and necklaces got found. A local court denied her bail, as the Customs Act was non-bailable. However, she got released on the payment of Rs 5 lakh as surety as well as getting ordered to pay Rs 18 lakh to the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of the Customs Department. Sheetal also got ordered to mark her attendance twice each week as well as seek the court’s permission when intending to travel outside the country.

Comparison of Bernard Madoff’s case and Sheetal Mafatlal’s case

The Madoff’s case involved crimes of investment frauds, money laundering, false statements and money laundering, whereas in Mafatlal’s case was all about tax evasion.  Madoff’s case led to the loss of billions of investor’s money through fraud.  Although the crimes committed are different, in that Madoff used deceit to obtain money and property while Sheetal avoided payment of tax, both cases are similar as the persons committed the crimes for personal advantage.

                       References

Cliff, G., & Desilets, C. (2014) White Collar Crime: What It Is & Where It's Going. Notre Dame JL Ethics & Pub. Policy, 28, 481

Friedrichs, D. (2009). Trusted Criminals: White Collar crime in contemporary society. Cengage Learning. p. 50

Shover, N., & Hochstetler, A. (2005) Choosing white-collar crime Cambridge University Press p. 53

Sivakumar, C. L. V., & Subbalakshmi, A. V. V. S. (2011) WHETHER CORPORATE GOVERNANCE OR GOVERNANCE OF CORPORATE CRIME?

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in affordable custom writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from college research paper services.