Wealth by Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy

Tami Oliphant is a Ph.D. candidate in Library and Information Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

Wealth by Stealth is a welcome exposé on the prevalence of corporate
crime, how the law favours corporations, and how this ultimately
undermines democracy.

Glasbeek, a corporate lawyer, opens the book with a comparison of
corporations to the “invisible friends” that children often have.
This arrangement allows human agents to act in the name of the
corporation (their invisible friend) and avoid personal responsibility
for anything that the corporation may do. Conversely, because they are
intangible, corporations are not held accountable the way human beings
are, although they enjoy the same judicial protections as humans. This
allows corporations to act in ways that human beings cannot. There is a
double protection: limited liability for investors, and the legal
treatment of a corporation as a person (without the responsibilities of
citizenship).

Compounding the problem is the fact that corporate crime is rarely
prosecuted as “criminal.” Glasbeek points out that corporations, and
more importantly the people who run them, are able to hide behind what
he terms “the corporate veil.” Essentially this corporate veil
allows corporations to flagrantly disregard employees, poison the
environment, and act in whatever ways the “marketplace” dictates in
order to do the one thing that corporations are supposed to do—earn
money. As Glasbeek writes, “They profit hugely from these perversions,
to the disadvantage of the majority of the people in our society.”

The Westray story is a poignant and telling example of what can happen
under this corporate governance system. On May 9, 1992, 26 coal miners
were killed in Nova Scotia when a Westray mine exploded. No one was ever
criminally charged, despite evidence suggesting that the human beings
behind the Westray corporation knew that the mine had major
infrastructure problems.

The main strength of Glasbeek’s book is that it takes difficult
concepts and presents them in a straightforward way, supported by
extensive notes and sources. Wealth by Stealth is an insightful and
disturbing look at the corporate world, the economy, and our judicial
system.