Canada Ignores White-Collar Crimes

With the recent verdict in the only Bre-X criminal case, Canada has once again shown just how lax its laws are towards white-collar crime (and every other type of crime for that matter). John Felderhof, the geologist involved, was found not guilty. He was the only person to ever be charged with a crime. Bre-X president David Walsh died of a brain aneurysm and fellow geologist Mike de Guzman supposedly fell to his death from a helicopter while flying over the jungles of Indonesia. Not a single other person involved with the company was ever charged. It's hard to believe that no one else could have been involved with one of Canada's biggest investment fraud.

Unlike our American counterpart, the Ontario Securities Commission did not feel the need to toughen regulations in the market, even after the collapse of Nortel. Here's an example of a company that operated for who knows how long with false financials and no one got as much as a slap on the wrist for their involvement. The CEO at the time, John Roth, walked away with well over $100 million after he cashed in stock options in 2000. Millions of Canadians suffered a financial loss either directly or indirectly as a result of the Nortel blunder and Mr. Roth gets to retire comfortably. Even after the replacement of key executives, inaccurate financial filings continued. No one has ever been held accountable in Canada.

I'm pretty sure that nothing would have happened to Ken Lay if Enron had been operating in Canada.