Google Executives Evaded Jail Time in Brazil: Is Business Too Powerful?

In late September 2012, the Brazilian state police detained the head of Google’s operations in the state after the company’s management failed to act on an electoral judge’s order to remove videos from its YouTube site criticizing a candidate in a rural county election. Separately, a judge ordered Google to remove a religiously-offensive video, which had sparked riots in the Middle East, within ten days or face fines. Google’s lawyers claim that the company is not responsible for what users upload. Earlier in the year, Brazil’s government threatened the head of Chevron’s operations there with arrest and passport-confiscation after a small leak occurred in the company.

Brazil, the largest South American state.   (World Atlas) 

The Wall Street Journal goes on to note the opinion of legal analysts that no executive at Google or Chevron was likely to “set foot in jail.” Brazil’s appeals process is long, and companies like Google and Chevron have deep pockets for legal defense. Consequently, even business practitioners convicted of major white-collar crimes are rarely, if ever, jailed in Brazil. Even so, the threats could thwart the South American state from being able to attract foreign direct investment. In other words, competition for foreign companies gives governments an incentive to look the other way in enforcing state law. Put another way, the lowest common denominator in terms of holding corporations accountable on the constraint of law and order could be one of the consequences of the spread of capitalism around the world. No public official wants to risk turning a potential “job creator” away.

Especially with the separation of ownership and control in the modern corporation, managerial accountability is crucial to ensuring that corporations abide by judicial orders. In many cases, senior managers can get away with making corporate-policy decisions that essentially ignore the constraints manifesting as judicial orders because deep corporate pockets can pay any resulting fines. Senior executives can be rather “free-wheeling” on corporate policies because the officials themselves—as citizens—are not subject to fines or imprisonment.

Corporations are not citizens; rather, the associations are creatures of the state created for particular purposes. Therefore, it can be said that the citizens operating the associations can and indeed should be held criminally liable for any “corporate” wrong-doing. Put another way, the actual decision-makers should be held accountable criminally for any decisions that violate a law or a judicial order. Otherwise, “corporations” can evade the law while their managers have little incentive to treat it as a constraint on profit-seeking.

Corporations do not act apart from the human beings within. An association just is its members. The people responsible for a “corporate” decision that violates the law can at least in many cases be identified, even if as scratched initials on the margins of a policy proposal. In fact, the police could charge a corporate official whose role the offending policy falls under even if that official had been negligent in not having kept up on the decision made by his or her subordinates. So coverage of responsibility is something that can be applied to particular people within the management of a company. Such coverage, if resulting in real jail time, would doubtless get managers’ attention rather quickly, as opposed to merely fining a company’s treasury. Unfortunately, Brazilian officials had a disincentive to implement such coverage with consequences with teeth, due to the countering pressure to attract businesses rather than repel their decision-makers.

Lest it be thought that creating an international body with the power to imprison executives of MNCs for crimes against an international code, the problem of how to enforce Brazil’s law on an international organization (e.g., Google) would go unanswered. One “consensus” global code would not touch on the regional and local specificities in criminal law. That people in Brazil were offended by a video does not mean that a global consensus would necessarily emerge in favor of criminalizing the video. For one thing, some governments support free speech even on opinions that are offensive to a majority.

The problem can be said to be that of cultural particularity vs. economic globalization. Both are viable and thus must be recognized. Multinational corporations must legally at least be multi-domestic in responding to cultural-legal particulars even while being the instruments of efficient international competition. Both values are legitimate, and yet they are in conflict at least in terms of the enforcement of local law. Statesmanship on behalf of such law even at the risk of losing a potential foreign business investing in local jobs is unfortunately all too rare, given the countervailing greed involved in attracting suitors away from other potential hosts.

All too often, leadership is gloss for greed rather than based on standards and principle. Put another way, the “principle” of efficient comparative advantage is often used by self-promoting governments as a means of obfuscating the real selling-out of the country’s own laws, which in turn ideally reflect moral values that are held by society. The question is perhaps whether governance structures geared to real accountability for business practitioners can be designed to counter the hegemony of greed over principled leadership. The political influence of the practitioners and their respective corporate treasuries over the governance itself—the creature coming to dominate its Creator—compounds the difficulty and suggests that it is no accident that corporate executives rarely see jail time.

Source:

Jeff Fick and John Lyons, “Google’s Brazil ChiefDetained; Court Bans Anti-Islam Video,” The Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2012.

Extrapolating from the Arab Spring to Corporate Social Responsibility

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and a myriad of other companies, sees a natural extension or follow-through from the pro-democracy protests in the Middle East and North Africa to more corporate social responsibility. As much as I would like to think that the twenty-first century proffers a new world, I think we have to acknowledge the weight of the political, economic and social strictures that we have uncritically inherited.

According to USA Today, “Branson says it took him seven years to realize businesses are part of the problem as they focus narrowly on profit and exhaust natural resources. Now, he believes the world has changed in the last several months, with revolutions in the Middle East, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, riots in London, famine in East Africa, and debt crises around the world. He quotes the band REM: "It's the end of the world as we know it … and I feel fine." Seven years? Branson has been thinking on all cylinders. Even if businesses are not part of the problem, the default of business is to make profit by turning resources into products to be consumed. This is the raison d’etre (i.e., the reason for being) of the modern corporation. Viewing its inherent function, as per its design, as part of “the problem” may simply be due to the sheer magnitude of a large corporation’s operations. In other words, a large foot is apt to leave a large footprint.

Moreover, changes in government, protests, natural disasters and a systemic overreliance on debt-financing by governments do not necessarily mean the end of the world as we know it. I wish this were so, but people in power have a nasty habit of retaining it, even if under subterfuges if necessary. For example, the military rule in Egypt at least as of the beginning of 2012 may put the “revolution” in 2011 in perspective. That is to say, the old guys are still in charge, so how much of a revolution was it? Furthermore, it would be naïve to believe that the corrupt relationship between business and government in Japan has been expunged by the post-tsunami clean-up. It is doubtful, for example, that TEPCO has been born-again as if baptized by the tsunami. 

The larger point Branson is making in his statement is that corporations will no longer be part of the problem because the world as we know it is no more. He cites several instances of corporate social responsibility to make his point. However, the business of business is still to make money, and much of CSR is still essentially marketing writ large. Without changing the design in corporate law, it is foolhardy to believe in a brave new world of corporate capitalism. It is at the very least a stretch to assume that pro-democracy protests or changes in government will somehow convince business executives to engage in CSR. Even in terms of corporate or “stakeholder” democracy, the linkage is tenuous because the expectation that governments should be democratic does not extend to corporations because the two are typically viewed as different domains. So to Branson, I would say, nice job with your companies and even on CSR, but let’s not get carried away on some jet to nirvana. As much as we would like to see the world remade rather than carrying on with baggage from the twentieth-century, we would get further toward this goal by keeping our legs on the ground.

Source:

Kathryn Caravan, “Branson’s ‘Screw Business As Usual’ Has High Points,” USA Today, January 23, 2012.