Okay kids, ready for your end-of-the-year corporate crime quiz?
Consider it real life jeopardy.
Passing grade is 15 out of 25.
Ready? (Answers below — no cheating!)
1. Starts with an A, ends with two fs. The king of lobbyists. Hand
caught in cookie jar doesn’t do it justice.
2. Means postpone. Accused of shuffling corporate money in and out of
Texas.
3. Lord of Crossharbour. Accused king of corporate kleptocracy.
4. Two former Justice Department officials who wrote memos on how to
prosecute corporations.
5. Senator from HCA.
6. Teaches a class at Columbia Law School titled “The Black Letter Law
of White Collar Crime.”
7. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice and lead Nuremberg prosecutor who
said — war of aggression is the supreme international crime.
8. Corporation forced into deferred prosecution, required to fund a
chair of business ethics at Seton Hall Law School — the school where
the prosecuting attorney graduated from.
9. Special prosecutor investigating bribery and fraud in Iraq.
10. Company that was required to create 1,600 jobs in Oklahoma as a
condition of deferred prosecution agreement.
11. After pleading guilty to taking bribes said this: “In my life, I
have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame.”
12. Pled guilty this year. Worked for Tom DeLay. Expressed his
philosophy on how to deal with opposition this way: “This whole thing
about not kicking someone when they’re down — you kick him until he
passes out, then beat him over the head with a baseball bat, then roll
him up in an old rug and throw him off a cliff and pound the surf below.”
13. U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the HealthSouth cases, and accused
chief judge of her district of being “intellectually dishonest” for
sentencing one of the lead executives to seven days in jail.
14. Alabama company convicted of massive pollution crimes.
15. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals throws out his 24-year prison
sentence of this Dynegy trader.
16. Scooter Libby’s lawyer. He said this about prosecuting corporations:
“Ten years ago, it was — save the individuals and plead the
corporation. Now, things have radically changed and it’s totally reversed.”
17. Most famous quote: “If your sources are wrong, you are going to be
wrong.”
18. Number of 30 major corporations that make up Dow Jones Industrial
Index that have been convicted of crimes.
19. When asked whether she tried to redecorate her prison cell, she told
NPR’s Terry Gross, “There are no materials to work with in a place like
Alderson.”
20. High-profile corporate crime prosecutor whose nickname in college
was “Ironbutt” for his ability to sit motionless in a study carrel for
hours.
21. Under this federal law, you can sue on behalf of the federal
government against a corporation that has ripped off the government. If
the government recovers the money, you get a percentage — up to 30
percent of the recovery.
22. Then-U.S. Attorney in Manhattan David Kelley wanted to prosecute
this firm for a massive criminal tax fraud, but was reportedly overruled
by James Comey at Main Justice. Firm got a sweetheart deferred
prosecution agreement.
23. Company and seven of its current or former executives indicted
earlier this year on federal charges that they knowingly put their
workers and the public in danger through exposure to vermiculite ore
contaminated with asbestos from the company’s mine in Libby, Montana.
24. Unit of this Swiss-based pharma giant pled guilty in February to
obstructing a federal audit.
25. He said this on November 29, 2005: “Any member of Congress,
Republican or Democrat, must take their office seriously and the ethics
seriously. The idea of a congressman taking money is outrageous. And
Congressman Cunningham is going to realize that he has broken the law
and is going to pay a serious price, which he should.”
Answers:
1. Jack Abramoff
2. Tom DeLay
3. Conrad Black
4. Eric Holder, Larry Thompson
5. Bill Frist
6. John Coffee
7. Robert Jackson
8. Bristol Myers Squibb
9. Stuart Bowen
10. MCI/WorldCom
11. Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham
12. Michael Scanlon
13. Alice Martin
14. McWane
15. Jamie Olis
16. Ted Wells
17. Judith Miller
18. Nine — 3M, Alcoa, Boeing, Exxon, General Electric, General Motors,
Merck, Pfizer, and United Technologies
19. Martha Stewart
20. Eliot Spitzer
21. False Claims Act
22. KPMG
23. W.R. Grace
24. Novartis
25. President George Bush
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, a corporate accountability group. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman