Exercise 6.1
Read the texts A and B and answer the questions:

1) Which act of wrongdoing in this unit do you think is the most serious?
2) Which do you think is the least serious?
3) Is financial wrongdoing a Victimless crime?

A. Insider dealing or insider trading:
Someone buys or sells securities using information that is not publicly available. Chinese walls are measures that you can take to stop knowledge in one department of your company being illegally used by another department, to buy or sell shares for example.
Price fixing: a group of companies in the same market secretly agree to fix prices at a certain level, so they do not have to compete with each other.
Market rigging: a group of investors work together to stop a financial market functioning as it should, to gain an advantage for themselves.

B. Fraud and embezzlement

'I'm Sam Woo. I've been a fraud squad detective for 20 years and I've seen a lot! Once, a gang counterfeited millions of banknotes in a garage. We found US$10 million in counterfeit notes. They were very good quality. Counterfeiting or forgery of banknotes was a problem, but now all the forgers are in jail. Faking luxury goods like Rolex watches was also a problem, but we're working hard to close workshops where fakes are made. There have been bad cases of fraud where someone offers to lend money, but demands that the borrower pays a "fee" before they get the loan. People can be stupid.
And there's embezzlement, a type of fraud where someone illegally gets money from their employer. One accountant sent false invoices to the company he worked for, and paid money from his company into bank accounts of false companies he had "created". He embezzled $2 million - quite a scam. There used to be a lot of racketeers demanding "protection money" from businesses. If they didn't pay, their businesses were burnt down.
Money laundering, hiding the illegal origin of money, is common - gangsters buy property with money from drugs. When they sell the property, the money becomes "legal". But banks now help by telling us when someone makes a large cash deposit.'

maz156    1   22.04.2020 17:53    12