White-collar crime refers to financially motivated nonviolent crime committed by business and government professionals. Within criminology, it was first defined by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation”. Typical white-collar crimes could include fraud, bribery, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, labour racketeering, embezzlement, cybercrime, copyright infringement, money laundering, identity theft, and forgery. E.g.: Nirav modi scam, Vijay Mallya scam, Harshad Mehta scam etc.

Body:

Rich people become corrupt due to:

• Greed: The people who usually commit these crimes are financially secure.
• Materialism: Driven by motive of material pleasures, they are willing to take any crooked means.
• Lack of Respect: Disregard and ignorance for laws as they think they are above laws.
• Power: Legislators and the law implementers belong to the same group or class to which these occupational criminals belong;
• Financial or physical duress.
• The emergence of cutting edge technology, growing businesses, and political pressures has opened up new avenues for these criminal organizations to prosper.
• This increase is due to a booming economy and technological advancement such as the Internet and fast money transfer systems.
• Law enforcement is sometimes reluctant to pursue these cases because they are so hard to track and investigate.
• It is very difficult to detect as white collar crimes always committed in privacy of an office or home and usually there is no eyewitness.

Measures needed:

• Strengthening the implementation of laws like Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, Benami Transactions act, Prevention of Money laundering act etc.
• Special Tribunals should be constituted with power to award sentence of imprisons upto 5 years for white-collar crimes. Convictions should result in heavy fines rather than arrest and detention of white-collar criminals.
• Strengthening Corporate Governance by implementing the measures suggested by Uday Kotak panel.
• Increasing the democratic nature of the company by improving transparency and accountability through audits, tax measures etc.
• Creating public awareness against these crimes through the media of press, and other audio-visual aids and legal literacy programmes.
• Public vigilance seems to be corner-stone of anti-white-collar crime strategy. Unless people strongly detest such crimes, it will not be possible to contain this growing menace.

Conclusion:

Our social system is corrupted by number of white collar crime and it is a great challenge for us to discover suitable resolution to the increasing menace of white-collar crime. These crimes are directly affecting the economy of the nation and the public’s confidence, therefore corrective action must be taken immediately for preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting economic crimes in order to minimize their outcome. The provisions of Indian Penal Code dealing with white-collar crimes should be amended to enhance punishment particularly fine in tune with changed socio-economic conditions.