January 29, 2016

Senator Warren Releases "Rigged Justice," First Annual Report Detailing How Weak Federal Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy

Report highlights 20 cases in 2015 in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter wrongdoing, protect workers, investors, taxpayers and families

A PDF copy of the report is available here

Washington, DC - United States Senator Elizabeth Warren today released a report titled Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy. The report, the first in an annual series on enforcement, highlights 20 of the most egregious civil and criminal cases during the past year in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter future wrongdoing and to protect taxpayers and families.

"Much of the public and media attention on Washington focuses on enacting laws. And strong laws are important - prosecutors must have the statutory tools they need to hold corporate criminals accountable," the report states. "But putting a law on the books is only the first step.  The second, and equally important, step is enforcing that law.  A law that is not enforced - or weakly enforced - may as well not even be a law at all."

"When government regulators and prosecutors fail to pursue big corporations or their executives who violate the law, or when the government lets them off with a slap on the wrist, corporate criminals have free rein to operate outside the law. They can game the system, cheat families, rip off taxpayers, and even take actions that result in the death of innocent victims-all with no serious consequences."

The 20 cases highlighted in Rigged Justice illustrate problematic enforcement patterns by federal agencies across a range of areas, from financial crimes to student loan rip-offs to auto safety violations to environmental disasters. In many of the cases described in the report, corporations reached settlements with the federal government that required no admission of guilt and held no individual executives accountable.

A PDF copy of the report is available here.

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