British Government Suggests Prison for Reckless Bankers

Bankers may be sent to prison

Prison Doors Set to Open for Bankers

Sky News reports 08 January 2012 that the British Government has suggested reckless bankers in the UK could go to prison. Until now, it has been commonly believed that UK bankers are immune to prison and enjoy a law unto themselves, outside of the common Law.

But according to Sky News, “bank chiefs who put major institutions at risk and damage the economy could face jail under new laws being considered by ministers.”

The treasury is considering various options to punish reckless bankers, including the offence of corporate negligence. Consultations will take place starting around March 2012 to make corporate negligence a criminal offence.

Bankers Bonuses Again

The new move by the British Government comes just in time to attract people's attention to the annual bonus season, when, at the beginning of each year, city bankers and chief executives of shareholding companies give themselves large bonuses, collectively amounting to many billions of pounds.

Unlike most employees who either do not see a bonus or receive a moderate bonus, bankers and chief executives generally slap a 300-400% super bonus to their own top salary, taking the money from the bank or whichever other share-holding company employs them.

Being chief executives or otherwise present in the managing boardroom, they see themselves as employers and not employees, and so help themselves to the company's money as they see fit. As they declare this money as either top salary, golden bonus or golden handshake, it effectively becomes legalised theft, as there is no other authority, either on the part of the shareholders or the State, that can establish how much they can earn.

The company boardroom could in fact decide to give the chief executive a one million pound bonus, or a ten million pound bonus, or even one of fifty million pounds, with other top bankers seated in the same boardroom receiving each a bonus of one million pounds or any sum above that figure. The shareholders are excluded from any binding decision in the matter, as too is the Government.

Corporate Negligence

The new law that is being considered by the Government might not necessarily put an end to all this, as it is still not clear whether it means bankers will be held legally responsible only for bringing the company they work for into a state of financial ruin, or also for detracting enormous sums of the company's money for their own personal gain.

Salaries of top bankers may well be in the region of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, whereas their bonuses may be, for example, 300% to 1000% higher than their salary. So if a new law on corporate negligence establishes that any sum of a bank's money being added to a banker's top salary is reckless and damaging to the banking company, whether or not the bank goes into a state of bankruptcy, then the practice of bankers in Britain giving themselves bonuses may become illegal.

At present it is still not clear whether bankers in Britain will be sent to prison for their part in the 2008 banking crisis, or whether they will be held to account for the remunerations they gave themselves that went beyond their established salary while directing the British banking system into sheer bankruptcy.

Should a new law on corporate negligence be retrospective, then possibly Britain's prison gates will open to those who evicted hundreds of thousands of people from their homes for failure to pay the mortgage, while busily giving themselves millions of pounds of the bank's money as personal remuneration.

Prosperity in Sight for Britain

Prosperity might come to Britain when the unjust are removed from their temporal position of power within the economy, when justice prevails in place of greed and speculation.

Written by D. Alexander