By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The primarily-corporate mainstream media was all atwitter this week after U.S. pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline was “fined” $3 billion and U.K. bank Barclay’s was “fined” close to $500 million after these two massive corporations were unmasked as corporate felons in their respective countries.
But while the “fines” may, on the surface, appear “massive” or even “punitive,” relative to the sheer magnitude of the crimes the “fines” were neither “massive” nor “punitive.” Moreover — and more importantly — neither the CEOs nor any other executives of these corporations have been imprisoned or even charged with any crimes.
In the case of GlaxoSmithKline, the primary felonies (and there were many of them) involved renaming and repackaging drugs that had been approved by the FDA to treat specified ailments in adults only and bribing wealthy doctors to prescribe these dangerous drugs to children to treat other ailments for which they had not been approved.
In the case of Barclay’s bank in the U.K., the primary felonies (and, again, there were numerous felonies) involved rigging bank interest rates at the height of the global economic meltdown between 2007 and 2009.
Although the mainstream media was very diligent about not reporting how much unlawful profit either of these capitalist corporations made off their prolonged serial felonies, it would be safe to assume that the profits were many, many times larger than the supposed “penalties.”
A recent study, cited on RT-TV yesterday, reported that over the past 11 years, the average “fine” levied against corporations for massive frauds and other felonies amounted to less than six percent of the unlawful profits those corporations gained from their illegal activities. read more »