White collar crime

This is a common perception that only lower class people are responsible for anti-social behaviour in our country. But such a perception could be incorrect in many cases. Actually, some profession offers lucrative opportunities for criminal activities which attract the upper class to involve in anti-social behaviour. It sometimes creates difficulties to define these activities in the ambit of traditional criminal law. These anti-social activities committed by the upper class or special group of people are generally known as white collar crimes.

A bulk number of white collar crimes are noticeable in our society. Among them most common crimes are corruption, bribery, tax evasion, fraud against the government, anti-trust violations, bank fraud, bankruptcy fraud, counterfeiting, economic espionage, embezzlement, extortion, forgery, money laundering and many more.

Anti-social behavioural tendency, narcissism, impulsiveness, borderline personality organisation, inability to form a commitment, vindictiveness, paranoia, risk-seeking, etc. are few examples of white collar criminal's behavioural pattern and personalities.

Transparency International, a German based NGO, has identified Bangladesh as the most corrupted country in the world for consecutive five years. People of upper socio-economic class are making huge amount of money by corruption, manipulation and abuse of power which has severe impact on national economy. Their crimes are insufficiently focused and most of the time undetected as well as remained beyond the domain of legal process.

To maintain its economic growth and development, Bangladesh needs to reduce white collar crimes and minimise the rate of corruption at the local level in different service sectors such as education, health, transport and others. The decreasing of foreign investors and national financial institutions outflow of fund from stock market are clear indications of negative impact of white collar crime in our country. Thus, the government must improve overall governance, take strict action against the offenders and implement some strong provisions of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of economic crimes.

A greater understanding of technology, competition, regulation, legislation and globalisation are needed in order to successfully manage the proper balance between economic progress and criminal opportunity. However, some  more  preventive steps can be suggested by saying zero tolerance against corruption as well as increasing the capacity for fighting against corruption, adopting some code of conduct by every institutions, maximising the use of information technology, establishing the rule of law in both private or public sector, strengthening parliamentary oversight, ensuring independence and effectiveness of the anti-corruption commission, and increasing the roles of civil society as well as mass media. Above all, the prevention of crime should be the first attention of criminal justice system in Bangladesh to minimise the white collar crime and to get rid from the stigma of corrupted country in the eyes of international community.                

Barrister Azizun Nahar
Advocate
Supreme Court of Bangladesh