Just this week, there was this article floating around in Wall Street Journal and Yahoo News about a judge acquitting Countrywide Financial Corp., which was under investigation about misinterpretation of evaluating a company's financial status. He stated that he did not have clear evidence proving their errors being intentional. Countrywide had noticed a flaw in handling payments on home loans, and claims not to be accountable for exploiting this flaw and its application.
According to me, Countrywide should be facing penalties pertaining to being guilty as charged. Though their involvement in this matter was not completely proven to be intentional, this case brings out the point that such kinds of instances are very common in corporate culture and the fact that it happens so often makes the corporate world appear to be negligent regarding the legality of the issue. In this instance, the pattern of errors made by Countrywide was successfully proven, but it was not concluded to be an intentional wrongdoing. This is when business ethics comes into light, which would say that Countrywide, no matter what, committed a felony and has to be made completely responsible for its actions. I would concur on this inference, as the company would realize its mistake and it will warn the rest of the corporate world of 'the consequences of carelessness'. Letting the company get away with its mistakes will definitely create enough ground for other companies to find ways to 'bend the rules'.
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I agree with you that I think Countrywide Financial Corp. should be responsible for the mistake they had made, no matter it is intentional or unintentional. Sometimes it is hard to judge whether the crime is committed by intentional or not. If everyone think they could get away from the crime by trying to prove it is unintentional, I could not imagine how this world will be. I think Countrywide should be punished even if it is just a light penalty.
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