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The 2020 Corporate Rap Sheet

For all of his populist bluster, Donald Trump has done little during his four years in office to stem the power of big business. He criticizes corporations only when he feels personally slighted or when it fits into one of his many outlandish conspiracy theories.

Fortunately, career officials at regulatory agencies and career prosecutors at the Justice Department, as well as those at the state level, have continued doing their jobs. The following is a selection of significant cases resolved during 2020.

Opioid market abuses: The Justice Department announced an $8 billion global resolution of its criminal and civil investigations into abuses by Purdue Pharma LP. The company agreed to plead guilty to three felony counts and pay criminal fines and forfeitures of $5.5 billion and $2.8 billion in a civil settlement. Given that the company is going through bankruptcy, it is unclear how much of this will actually be paid.

Bogus bank accounts: As part of the ongoing prosecution of Wells Fargo for pressuring employees to meet unrealistic sales goal by creating bogus accounts without customer permission, the Justice Department announced that the bank would pay $3 billion to resolve criminal and civil charges. Wells was allowed to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid a guilty plea.

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AstraZeneca’s Vaccine Stumbles

It’s difficult to decide whether to be more suspicious of the Trump Administration or the major drugmakers when evaluating the coming covid vaccine rollout.

The administration, eager to take credit for the unusually quick development of at least two products, is now revealed to have passed up the opportunity to lock in larger supplies of the Pfizer offering, prompting the company to make deals with other countries. Trump tried to cover up the error with an America First executive order, but that action is said to be unenforceable. Unless some of the other vaccines in development come to fruition soon, it may take a lot longer than promised to inoculate the U.S. population. The situation is worsened by the decision of the administration to leave states to work out distribution plans on their own.

Pfizer, meanwhile, was getting showered with praise as its vaccine began to be administered in the United Kingdom, yet it soon had to contend with reports of several serious allergic reactions. The company, it turns out, had excluded people with a history of significant adverse reaction to vaccines from late-stage trials. UK officials are now telling those with serious allergies to put off getting the shot.

Then there is AstraZeneca, whose vaccine developed with the University of Oxford appears to be effective, but exactly how effective is in doubt given that researchers initially screwed up the doses given during the clinical trial and had to improvise.

Read the full post at https://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/6735

Barr Opts for Prisoner Executions over Corporate Prosecutions

The priorities of the Barr Justice Department came to light with the revelation that it is rushing to schedule a series of federal prisoner executions before the Trump Administration comes to an end in January. DOJ is exhibiting a lot less urgency about meting out penalties for corporate defendants.

Four years ago at this time, the Obama Justice Department used its final weeks to negotiate an extraordinary wave of settlements with big business, collecting more than $30 billion in fines and settlements. During a period of ten days there were four ten-figure settlements: Deutsche Bank’s $7.2 billion toxic securities case; Credit Suisse’s $5.3 billion case in the same category; Volkswagen’s $4.3 billion case relating to emissions fraud; and Takata’s $1 billion case relating to defective airbag inflators.

The rush to settle was based at least in part on concern that the incoming Trump Administration would downplay the prosecution of corporate offenses as part of the assault on government regulation. That concern turned out to be valid, though not to the extent many observers expected. Prosecutions and regulatory enforcement have declined in some areas but have not disappeared.

Since this year’s election results became clear, there have been no billion-dollar resolutions announced by DOJ. During this time the only significant announcement was one involving a $135 million settlement of a foreign bribery case against Vitol, the secretive European commodity trading company.

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In Pfizer We Trust?

The world is in love with Pfizer and Moderna. The two pharmaceutical companies have each announced amazing results in their separate efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Pfizer first announced that its product appeared to be 90 percent effective, only to be upstaged days later by Moderna and its claim of 94.5 percent. Pfizer then revised its efficacy rate to 95 percent.

Like everyone else, I am eager to see progress made in the fight against covid, but there is a part of me that wonders whether these announcements, coming in record-breaking time, are a bit too good to be true. Don’t get me wrong—I am not a vaccine skeptic. I recently got my flu shot and previously was inoculated against shingles and pneumonia.

Yet I am a wary when it comes to grand pronouncements by large corporations about advances that will generate vast amounts of profit. This is particularly the case with large drug companies, which have a long history of deception and malfeasance.

Pfizer is a prime example. Its track record is filled with cases in which it was accused of misleading regulators and the public about the safety of its products.

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Limiting Corporate Influence

Among the many challenges the Biden Administration will have to confront after Trump ends his temper tantrum is deciding on the posture it wants to take toward big business. There will be a battle for the soul of the new president as corporate Democrats vie with progressives to influence policy in areas such as regulation and antitrust.

The initial signs are encouraging. The Biden transition just released a list of some 500 individuals who will be staffing the Agency Review Teams charged with preparing the way for a transfer of power in all parts of the executive branch.

I went through the list of affiliations and found only about 20 for large corporations. The vast majority of the people are from academia, state government, law firms, non-profits, unions, think tanks and foundations. It is likely that some of the law firms are there to represent specific corporate interests, but the numerous representatives from progressive public interest, environmental and labor groups should serve as an effective counterweight.

Read the full post at https://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/6711

Downplaying Corporate Misconduct

Despite all the effort it has put into eliminating business regulations, the Trump Administration insists that it diligently enforces those rules that are still in effect. Moreover, Trumps likes to depict himself as some sort of crusader against corporate misconduct.

A new indication of the absurdity of these claims comes from the U.S. Labor Department, which recently decided it would no longer issue press releases when citing companies for violations of rules governing workplace safety, employment discrimination and labor standards. According to an internal memo obtained by the New York Times, the excuse for the change was that such releases tend to linger prominently in search results and would be misleading if an enforcement action was ultimately found to have been unjustified.

Rarely does an alleged violation turn out to have no basis, and in those very few instances the problem could be resolved by the issuance of a new press release that would presumably circulate as easily as the original one. The real motivation for the change is to reduce the ability of agencies to pressure corporate transgressors and could be a stepping-stone toward the elimination of all announcements of violations.

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The $8 Billion Slap on the Wrist

In the normal course of events, an $8 billion penalty and a guilty plea would represent a landmark event in the history of corporate crime enforcement. The newly announced resolution of charges against Purdue Pharma are, however, a disappointment and a missed opportunity to mete out appropriate punishment to one of the most egregious rogue companies this country has ever seen.

Let’s start with the monetary penalty. The $8 billion amount ranks 11th among all the fines and settlements collected in Violation Tracker. It is surpassed by penalties paid by companies such as BP, Volkswagen, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

As bad as the environmental and financial conduct of those corporations may have been, it is likely that Purdue Pharma has caused much greater harm. It bears a significant amount of responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of people who have died from overdoses after becoming addicted to opioids the company recklessly promoted.

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Trump’s Environmental Charade

When challenged about their climate denialism, President Trump and Vice President Pence tend to respond with a claim that the United States has the world’s cleanest air and water, thereby implying that their administration is doing a good job enforcing environmental regulations. Aside from being a separate issue from climate change, the claim is false in two ways: our air quality and water quality are from the best, and enforcement has been on the decline.

The latter should come as no surprise, since regulation-bashing has been one of the hallmarks of the Trump Administration. It is one of the few areas in which traditional Republican values have been preserved.

Much of the administration’s focus has been on reversing the environmental initiatives of the Obama Administration, yet there has also been an erosion in the enforcement of longer-standing laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The latest evidence of this comes in a new study by David Uhlmann of the Environmental Crimes Project at the University of Michigan Law School. The analysis, which has received prominent coverage in the New York Times, finds that during the first two years of the Trump Administration the number of criminal prosecutions under the Clean Water Act fell 70 percent and those under the Clean Air Act declined by more than 50 percent.

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The Many Sins of the Tech Giants

The 400-page report just published by the Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee is a damning review of the anti-competitive practices of the big tech companies—Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google’s parent Alphabet.

The report finds that in various portions of the digital world these companies have amassed what amounts to monopoly control and have not hesitated to use it crush or absorb competitors. Comparing the tech giants to the oil barons and railroad tycoons of the late 19th century, the report calls for aggressive measures such as breaking up the companies and doing more rigorous reviews of proposed mergers and acquisitions in the future.

Among the broader consequences of the rising power of the tech giants are, the report argues: a weakening of innovation and entrepreneurship, a decline in the number of trustworthy sources of news, and an erosion of safeguards for the privacy of personal information.

One aspect of the report that has not received much coverage is the brief discussion of the power of the tech giants in the labor market.

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The Legacy of Financial Services Racism

At a time when numerous large corporations have been expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, it is important not to forget that big business has played a role in perpetuating systemic racism and widening the racial wealth gap.

This reality became clearer for me while I was collecting a new category of data for Violation Tracker: class-action lawsuits brought against financial services corporations engaging in discriminatory practices against their customers.

I was able to identify a total of 30 cases in which banks, insurance carriers and consumer finance companies paid a total of $400 million in settlements over the past two decades to resolve allegations that they charged higher premiums or interest rates to minority customers.

Read the full post at https://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/6681

High-Minded Hypocrisy

As they push forward to fill a Supreme Court vacancy shortly before a presidential election, Republicans are putting on a master class in hypocrisy. A new report on self-proclaimed socially responsible corporations reminds us that the tendency to say one thing and do another can also be seen in the world of business.

The study, produced by consulting firm KKS Advisors and an initiative called Test of Corporate Purpose (TCP), looks at large corporations that were signatories to a much-ballyhooed statement issued in 2019 under the auspices of the Business Roundtable. That statement was meant to give the impression that big business is no longer concerned only with maximizing returns for shareholders and is promoting the well-being of other stakeholders such as employees.

Some of us responded to the Roundtable’s statement with skepticism, but KKS and TCP decided to put the 181 signatories to the test, looking at their behavior in dealing with the pandemic and the problem of inequality.

Read the full post at https://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/6676

Corporate Culprits Receiving COVID Bailouts

In implementing the CARES Act passed by Congress to rescue the economy from the effects of the pandemic, the Trump Administration has directed tens of billions of dollars in aid to companies with a track record of misconduct. This transfer of public wealth to private bad actors will likely turn out to be more expensive than the TARP bailout of the banks a decade ago, given that much of the new aid will not be repaid.

My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First have found that more than 43,000 regulatory violators and other business miscreants have so far received $57 billion in grants and $91 billion in loans, including many that are forgivable. Over the past decade, the penalties paid by these companies for their misdeeds amounted to more than $13 billion. Our findings are summarized in a new report titled The Corporate Culprits Receiving COVID Bailouts.

We derived these numbers through a careful comparison of the CARES Act data we have compiled for our Covid Stimulus Watch website and the entries covering the past decade in Violation Tracker.

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Small Companies, Big Misdeeds

More than 1 million companies have received financial assistance from the CARES Act. My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First have been seeking to determine how many of those recipients have a track record of misconduct, and we will soon be releasing a report summarizing what we have found.

One conclusion I can share now is that the misbehavior can be found among small companies as well as large ones. While many of the smaller firms and non-profits paid penalties for commonplace offenses, some were involved in more serious cases. Here are some examples:

Coast Produce Company has received a Paycheck Protection Program loan worth between $2 and $5 million (the data was disclosed in ranges). In 2015 it paid $4 million to resolve civil allegations that it fraudulently overcharged the federal government for fresh fruits and vegetables it supplied to military dining facilities and Navy ships in Southern California. As part of a second agreement with criminal prosecutors, it agreed to implement various measures to ensure the company complies with its legal obligations.

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The Corporate Marauder Undermining the Postal Service

Donald Trump got elected in part by selling the idea that his business experience would enable him to do a great job of running the government. We see how that turned out. And now we have another veteran of the private sector wreaking havoc on the United States Postal Service.

Louis DeJoy was named postmaster general after spending four decades in the trucking and logistics business, becoming wealthy enough in the process to join the ranks of Republican megadonors. He made his name and his fortune through the creation of a company called New Breed Logistics, which grew to prominence by securing contracts with large corporations such as Boeing as well as the Postal Service.

In 2014 he sold New Breed to the Fortune 500 company XPO Logistics, staying on to run the New Breed operation and serve as a director of XPO until 2018. If we want to get a sense of the management approach DeJoy is bringing to the USPS, we can look at the track record of New Breed and XPO.

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The Corporate Culprits Receiving Covid Bailouts

Allegations of insider trading threaten to derail a plan by the Trump Administration to provide a $765 million covid-related loan to Eastman Kodak. This comes on the heels of controversy over the administration’s use of $700 million in coronavirus relief funds as a loan to trucking company YRC Worldwide, supposedly for national security reasons.

There will undoubtedly be more revelations about these specific sweetheart deals, but they also highlight a broader question about the vast amounts of federal assistance that has been flowing to businesses during the pandemic: to what extent are funds going to companies that have a track record of misconduct and may very well continue those misdeeds while getting taxpayer aid.

My colleagues and I have been seeking to answer at least the first part of that question with our work on two databases: Covid Stimulus Watch, which collects information on recipients of CARES Act business assistance, and Violation Tracker, which for the past five years has been assembling data on penalties paid by thousands of companies for regulatory infractions and other wrongdoing.

Each of the databases seeks to match the companies named in individual covid awards or penalties to a universe of more than 3,000 larger parent corporations. That allows us to aggregate the data to show the full extent to which a parent is getting aid or being penalized across its various operations.

We are also connecting the parents across the two datasets. We have 700 examples of medium and large companies that are both receiving covid aid and that have paid federal or state penalties for misconduct.

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Who Is Hogging Covid Stimulus Funds?

The main cause for the stalemate in Congress over a new round of covid stimulus funding is a belief by numerous Republicans that the federal government has been too generous to the unemployed. The enhanced jobless benefits created by the CARES Act need to be curtailed, they argue, to push people to return to work.

Those worrying about disincentives to work do not express similar concerns when it comes to assistance for businesses. Yet there are glaring examples of corporations that have exploited a variety of covid programs to the hilt.

Take the example of the aviation sector. As shown in Covid Stimulus Watch, the Payroll Support Program (PSP) has provided about $20 billion in grants and $7 billion in loans not only to the major airlines but also to smaller passenger carriers, air cargo companies, airport service providers and others.

Despite the generosity of this program, about 170 recipients also turned up on the list released in early July of companies that received awards under the Paycheck Protection Program. The PPP provided these firms more than $200 million in potentially forgivable loans on top of the $500 million in grants they got from the PSP. (The $200 million is calculated by using the midpoint of the ranges in which the PPP awards were disclosed.)

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Big Business and the PPP

By now it is clear that the recipients of Paycheck Protection Program loans were often companies larger than the mom-and-pop operations we were led to believe would be the main beneficiaries. A closer examination of the data shows assistance going not just to mid-sized companies but also to portions of Big Business.

This finding comes from a comparison of the PPP data released in early July to the 1.1 million entries my colleagues and I at Good Jobs First have assembled in our Violation Tracker and Subsidy Tracker databases. The Trackers link the individual penalty or subsidy records to a universe of nearly 4,000 parent companies.

We have now been looking for matches between Tracker data and the more than 1 million entries we have assembled in our newer database Covid Stimulus Watch, which contains data on loans and grants to companies and large non-profits from 19 programs created by the CARES Act.

Read the full post at https://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/6631

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