White Collar Crime

Andrew Layman:  PCB CEO

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of the KZN White Collar Crime Task Group which was hosted by the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry.   The members of this Group include senior investigators within SAPS and other people involved in some way with the control of commercial crime.    The chairperson of the Task Group, Peter Feuilherade, did a presentation on the salient points in the Protection of Disclosure Act which was passed into law in 2000.    Like other pieces of legislation introduced to manage corruption, this has a profile so low that it is almost obscure, at least to many people who really should know about it.   It is the law that encourages whistle-blowing and protects whistle-blowers.   

Experts acknowledge that the exposure of corruption, fraud and other white collar criminal acts is essential if they are to be brought under control.    Normal annual audits account for very few instances of exposure and the reality is that if there is exposure at all, it comes about mostly by accident or because it is reported by someone who knows about it.     Whistle-blowers have an important role to play, and the law provides pretty secure protection as long as the disclosure is done in good faith and is valid.    However, experience, even since the law was passed, is that whistle-blowers are prejudiced, if not directly, then indirectly either by the employer or by other people who resent the disclosure of information no matter how important it may be for the wrong-doing to be exposed.

Despite the fact that the person who makes a disclosure which is subsequently found to be untrue and is motivated by vindictiveness rather than moral outrage loses any right to protection, I can’t help feeling that the law is naïve.     This is particularly true in a society where back-stabbing is so deplorably prevalent.   In our local government context in Pietermaritzburg we have read any number of reports in the daily newspaper which have denigrated individuals and which have been based on disclosures by enemies with axes to grind.    The Act seems to have an implicit understanding that all disclosures are made by people with integrity and are true.    There is another reason for the naïveté, as well.    The public school tradition on which some of our better-known schools are based deplored whistle-blowing as being worse than any incident or action that was being disclosed.     To be honest, in just about all adolescent communities and across all cultures, I daresay, ‘ratting’ invites serious disapproval.    This attitude is to be found in all brotherhoods, whether they are formally constituted, or not.   People who perpetrate acts that deserve to be disclosed rely on this misguided ‘loyalty’ factor for preservation.

Thus, this noble piece of legislation advocates a moral obligation which people themselves do not respect.   Even if they are not among those who align themselves to the false values of tradition, it is a whole lot less trouble not “to get involved”.    This is a kind of apathy.   If we were being prejudiced directly by someone’s corruption, we might take a stand, but if it is the company, or the government, or the national economy, or the poor that are being adversely affected, we can turn a blind eye and sleep in peace at night.   And this is the very reason, of course, that corruption and many other supposedly “victimless” crimes flourish.     Vigilance on the part of the police or auditors or any other agency of monitoring is insufficient to expose the crimes.    If every right-minded worker or citizen took the trouble to report what they often know, and have seen or heard, the extra exposure would result in less opportunity for the criminals to get away with their crimes.      This assumes that disclosure leads to investigation and successful prosecution.     The fact that this sequence is not always enacted is another reason why people decline to make reports.    They are quite easily dismissed as figments of a fertile imagination or, at least, a misinterpretation of events.    Perhaps it is another sense in which the Act is naïve.   Good faith whistle-blowing requires considerable courage and a great deal of thought on the part of the person doing the disclosing.    Suspicion without fact preys on the conscience, promotes doubt and raises stress.   

If we want a better world, however, we must find the courage to do what is right.   It is the moral duty of employers to encourage employees to blow the whistle on corruption and give them the admiration they deserve for doing so.

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