Illegally Amassed Assets of US Corporate Executive Will Be Confisticated

US government plans to confiscate all the assets that a corporation or a corporate executive has illegally amassed.

According to the report of The Bloomberg on September 25, 2002, US Department of Justice will widen the scope of the Confiscation Act to fight the white crimes. Thus, the act, which has been mobilized for confiscation of assets of drug rings or organized crime syndicates, will be applied to corporations and businesspersons. Once the asset is confiscated, it will be distributed to investors and victims of illegal acts. Justice Department will focus their investigation on the executives and directors of the corporation that commits a crime.

Justice Department will hold a national meeting of prosecutors from Sep. 26 to 27, and will send a protocol for prosecution of white-collar crime, which mainly contains the idea mentioned above.

In the meeting, US President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft will also attend the meeting and ask for strong reaction against illegal corporate activities.

This counter-measure has come out in the middle of a series of corporate scandals such as Enron, and WorldCom. Due to the scandals, the stock market has collapsed and various economic indexes have plummeted. Shot down with them were the confidence in US economy and trust in US corporations.

Last July, President Bush signed into law an act, under which executives convicted of corporate crimes can be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and criminals convicted of violation of Securities Law can be up to 25 years in prison.

In addition to this, the federal prosecutors’ office will confiscate $2.5 billion worth of assets of Adelphia’s founding family, who were arrested in last July with fraud charges. Adelphia now ranks 6th among US cable companies. They are suspected of hiding the information on the company’s debts, which reached up to $2.7 billion, from the investors in order to make it look like a company of great potential for improvement.

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