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CounterPunch
January
3, 2003
The 10 Worst Corporations of
2002
by RUSSELL MOKHIBER
and ROBERT WEISSMAN
2002 will forever be remembered as the year of corporate
crime, the year even President George Bush embraced the notion
of "corporate responsibility."
While the Bush White House has now downgraded
its "corporate responsibility portal" to a mere link
to uninspiring content on the White House webpage, and although
the prospect of war has largely bumped the issue off the front
pages, the cascade of corporate financial and accounting scandals
continues.
We easily could have filled Multinational
Monitor's list of the 10 Worst Corporations of the Year with
some of the dozens of companies embroiled in the financial scandals.
But we decided against that course.
As extraordinary as the financial misconduct
has been, we didn't want to contribute to the perception that
corporate wrongdoing in 2002 was limited to the financial misdeeds
arena.
For Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst
Corporations of 2002 list, we included only Andersen from the
ranks of the financial criminals and miscreants. Andersen's assembly
line document destruction certainly merits a place on the list.
(Citigroup appears on the list as well, but primarily for a subsidiary's
involvement in predatory lending, as well as the company's funding
of environmentally destructive projects around the world.)
As for the rest, we present a collection
of polluters, dangerous pill peddlers, modern-day mercenaries,
enablers of human rights abuses, merchants of death, and beneficiaries
of rural destruction and misery.
 Multinational Monitor has named Arthur Andersen,
British American Tobacco (BAT), Caterpillar, Citigroup, DynCorp,
M&M/Mars, Procter & Gamble, Schering Plough, Shell and
Wyeth as the 10 Worst Corporations of 2001.
Appearing in alphabetical order, the
10 worst are:
Arthur Andersen, for a massive scheme to destroy documents related
to the Enron meltdown. "Tons of paper relating to the Enron
audit were promptly shredded as part of the orchestrated document
destruction," a federal indictment against Andersen alleged.
"The shredder at the Andersen office at the Enron building
was used virtually constantly and, to handle the overload, dozens
of large trunks filled with Enron documents were sent to Andersen's
main Houston office to be shredded." Andersen was convicted
for illegal document destruction, effectively putting the company
out of business.
BAT, for operating worldwide programs supposedly
designed to prevent youth smoking but which actually make the
practice more attractive to kids (by suggesting smoking is an
adult activity), continuing to deny the harmful health effects
of second-hand smoke, and working to oppose efforts at the World
Health Organization to adopt a strong Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control.
Caterpillar, for selling bulldozers to the Israeli Defense
Forces (IDF), which are used as an instrument of war to destroy
Palestinian homes and buildings. The IDF has destroyed more than
7,000 Palestinian homes since the beginning of the Israeli occupation
in 1967, leaving 30,000 people homeless.
Citigroup, both for its deep involvement in the Enron
and other financial scandals and its predatory lending practices
through its recently acquired subsidiary The Associates. Citigroup
paid $215 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges
that The Associates engaged in systematic and widespread deceptive
and abusive lending practices.
DynCorp, a controversial private firm which subcontracts
military services with the Defense Department, for flying planes
that spray herbicides on coca crops in Colombia. Farmers on the
ground allege that the herbicides are killing their legal crops,
and exposing them to dangerous toxins.
M&M/Mars, for responding tepidly to revelations about
child slaves in the West African fields where much of the world's
cocoa is grown, and refusing to commit to purchase a modest 5
percent of its product from Fair Trade providers.
Procter & Gamble, the maker of Folger's coffee and part of the
coffee roaster oligopoly, for failing to take action to address
plummeting coffee bean prices. Low prices have pushed tens of
thousands of farmers in Central America, Ethiopia, Uganda and
elsewhere to the edge of survival, or destroyed their means of
livelihood altogether.
Schering Plough, for a series of scandals, most prominently
allegation of repeated failure over recent years to fix problems
in manufacturing dozens of drugs at four of its facilities in
New Jersey and Puerto Rico. Schering paid $500 million to settle
the case with the Food and Drug Administration.
Shell Oil, for continuing business as usual as one of
the world's leading environmental violators -- while marketing
itself as a socially and environmentally responsible company.
Wyeth, for using duplicitous means, and without sufficient
scientific proof, to market hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
to women as a fountain of youth. Scientific evidence reported
in 2002 showed that long-term HRT actually threatens women's
lives, by increasing the risks of breast cancer, heart attack,
stroke and pulmonary embolism.
What's the lesson to draw from this year's
10 worst list? Not only are Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and
the rest indicative of a fundamentally corrupt financial system,
they are representative of a rotten system of corporate dominance.
The full 10 Worst Corporations of 2002
list is available at http://www.multinationalmonitor.org.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational
Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action. They are
co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999.)
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