Sometimes unethical leaders do get their comeuppance
by Miki Saxon
Speaking of unethical leaders, Conrad Black, ex-CEO of Hollinger International, was sentenced to 61/2 years in prison yesterday. Prosecutors had asked for as many as 30 years…saying he had not shown “one shred of remorse” for looting the company…
Unlike Jeff Skilling’s denial of guilt after his conviction, Black said, “I do wish to profess my profound regret and sadness at the severe hardship of all the shareholders at the evaporation of $1.8 billion in shareholder value under my successors.”
Of course, his successors were only there because Black and his buddies stole $6 million—tip money, assuming he ever tipped.
In the end, Mr. Black and his three colleagues were found guilty of taking illegal payments from the company in two schemes adding up to $6.1 million — a relative trifle in the world of billionaires once inhabited by Mr. Black where, at its peak, his own net worth was estimated at more than $400 million.
But this kind of thing isn’t limited to moguls or big city people.
San Diego, CA The U.S. attorney’s office announced late Wednesday afternoon that a grand jury has indicted a 63-year-old woman on charges alleging that she embezzled more than $120,000 in military veteran’s survivor benefits over a 10-year period.
Adelanto, CA — The mayor of this high desert down was arrested Tuesday along with his wife for allegedly stealing more than $20,000 from Little League coffers over three years.
A comment on yesterday’s post mentions the possibility that it may be inaccurate to generalize about ethics and religion since the ethics survey focused on business, which is most likely to be in urban areas and he wondered if the survey included non-profits and churches.
That got me thinking about an article I read recently about a woman who embezzled from the Little League in a small town in eastern Washington. So I googled “embezzlement and “Little League” and there were 324,000 hits in English.
Then I tried “embezzlement and church” and got 427,000 hits.
Unethical behavior is alive and well everywhere, but it’s nice to know that the perpetrators sometimes get caught and even punished.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Punished?
If you walk into a bank and steal $50,000 you get sent to prison for 20 years.
If you walk into a boardroom and steal millions, you get a few years. Then you walk out, still a rich hero that people will happily hire for keynotes and book signings.
Still, it’s a good start.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I agree totally, but beggars can’t be choosers and, as they say, something is better than the nothing. They used to walk away—or get pardoned by the President or governor.
I just hope they find all his assets.
December 12th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Yet again your assum… okay we won’t call them assumptions… your attempts to convey a meaning without basis are ridiculous and not comparable.
I’m actually surprised that the google search for “church embezzelement” was only roughly 25% higher when the words little league pulls 8,970,000 views in google and the word church itself pulls 48,400,000 – roughly 400% higher.
Case in point: if you do a search for “president bush intelligent” you get 523,000 results vs. “albert einstein intelligent” which gets only 318,000. Indeed.
Obviously not a very valid way to gauge information.
December 12th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Jesse, I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. You brought up the idea that the survey focused on business, which is mostly in urban areas and wondered if it had included non-profits and churches.
What’s amusing to me is that I was actually looking for two specific stories, one about a woman who embezzled from the Little League where she was secretary and the other about a minister who embezzled from his church. Both incidents were in my newspaper because it covers Clark County and eastern Washington, mostly small towns and many are rural. I was actually surprised at the number of hits, especially from Little League, although I’m not sure why.
My only point is that greed and the great ‘ME’ is everywhere, I really don’t see it centered in one type of area.
I find the main difference to be the number of zeros involved and the number of people affected. The psychological devastation caused by the breaking of trust is relatively equal.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I believe the point Miki is making is that dishonesty is found in all professions and at all income levels.
I believe the point made yesterday in the comments was that peer pressure works to pull people back into line.
I think if you connect the two, you find that if people believe they will get away with something, they are more likely to do it.
If people believe that their behavior will be reported to their peers and social circle, they will be more careful about their behavior.
I don’t think these are controversial points, but they are pointers to two successful managment techniques used by project managers everywhere:
1. Accurate and complete meeting minutes that include due dates to each action item or result committed to during the meeting.
2. An Issue List – which identifies each slipped goal, or result unproduced with a name, a date and the # of days late.
Both these tools serve to keep the team updated on who is producing and who is failing.
The media, whether it be print or tv or radio or internet, play this role in our public lives. It’s why we allow the federal government to regulate these industries. When the regulations get lax, when journalists are untrained, or when we allow them to loosen their standards, we all lose.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Kathy, good points, but I wasn’t aware that the media in general actually had any standards and it seems that training has kinda gone south with the citizen-journalist movement.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Those are fighting words to anyone who has worked as a journalist. Journalism is a profession, and like every other profession, has standards, ethics and a professional code.
If you choose to watch programs or read newspapers (or books or blogs) that do not adhere to these standards, that is your decision, however, in much the same way as one can’t expect fabulous results from a contractor who is either ignorant or unwilling to follow building codes, one can’t expect to learn much from journalists (or those that call themselves journalists) who are either ignorant or unwilling to adhere to the standards of their profession.
The BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, these are news outlets that have earned their reputation – and when they fall down, they are called on their errors by the a good bit of the educated world.
No one is terrifically surprised when Fox News drops the ball.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Kathy, My apologies. I agree that journalism is a profession with standards and ethics, but that doesn’t mean they’re upheld 100%—anymore than doctors or lawyers.
The current world suffers from the blurring of the lines between fact and opinion, the rise of of citizen-journalists who make little effort to be unbiased and even outright lies are eventually accepted as truth because with the migration of information you can no longer delete anything from public view, so retractions and recanting have little effect.
And much as we rail against it, the reality is that
vast majority of people, and I include the educated ones, aren’t getting their information from the four sources you mention.