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Corruption and Crony Capitalism Kill

Posted on October 31, 2011 by William Black | Comments Off

The recent Turkish earthquake, as with its modern predecessors, has shown that the witches’ brew that crony capitalism produces is a leading cause of death and severe injury. Control fraud, the use of a seemingly legitimate entity by those that control it to defraud, exists in all three major sectors – private, public, and non-profit. Crony capitalism typically involves the interaction of public and private sector control fraud. I have written primarily about accounting control frauds, which are property crimes of mass destruction. Anti-customer, anti-public, and anti-employee control frauds can all cause mass casualties. Earthquakes and the tsunamis they produce can kill hundreds of thousands of people. Government programs have been exceptionally successful in reducing the loss of life from natural disasters. Early warnings, evacuation routes, barriers, and training can greatly reduce the losses caused by tsunamis. Seismic building codes, if properly enforced, can reduce direct deaths from earthquakes to exceptionally low levels even in severe seismic events. The saying is: earthquakes don’t kill people; collapsing structures do.

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