COMMENT: Why Sudhir will not be jailed

Another explanation is that white-collar criminals do not think they are committing any crime. Sudhir and his wealthy ilk see nothing wrong in grabbing any opportunity to make as much money as possible, especially if they are competing to be the richest man in Africa.

It is the same with officials at Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC, UBS, and JP Morgan Chase who have all been found culpable. All accused were all wealthy, bright, and powerful people. Yet they committed crimes often not committed by even poor clerks.

Recall that at the time BoU claims Sudhir was siphoning money out of Crane Bank, Forbes was announcing that the tycoon’s net worth was US$1.1 billion. In the case before court, BoU claims he took Shs400 billion (Approx.US$111 million or 10% of Sudhir’s net worth) from the bank over a three year period. That is the equivalent of a parent who earns Shs1 million a month stealing Shs1000 from his daughters purse. Why would anyone do such a silly thing? If they did, what could explain their behavior?

Apparently, committing white-collar crime seems to require a shift in the sub-conscious sense of wrong and right. The shift is intuitive and sufficient to lead one to commit a crime without perceiving it as a crime. Think of an army commander who thinks it is OK for thousands of people to be killed for him to win a war or a terrorist who kills innocents to advance a cause. Such crime is abstract, the impact distant, and its harm difficult to appreciate for both culprits and victims. Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes makes this point in his book titled `Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal’.

Could this explain why Sudhir only started committing the said crimes in the last three years when he had run Crane Bank for 20 years? Could it be that as he got wealthier, his sense of the harmfulness of the crimes he is accused of changed? Could it explain why, even now, Sudhir speaks about the saga as if he is a man more sinned against than sinning? What about the BoU officials accused of colluding with Sudhir? Why none of the soft tears of remorse?

Gary Becker; an economics and sociology professor at the University of Chicago, who popularised the rational theory of criminality, discusses these points. He says “individuals become criminals because of the financial rewards from crime compared to legal work, taking account of the likelihood of apprehension and conviction, and the severity of punishment”.

In other words, Sudhir and BOU officials could have acted as calculative rational persons, weighing the costs and benefits of actions, and possibly concluding they might never even be caught. A person who finds a bag of money lying around and hands it to the police is noble, but one who keeps it is not a thief either. If BOU failed to lock the shop door, it should not be surprised that some people grab the opportunity.

Based on these three views, this case ceases to be limited to Sudhir. It should enable motives, influencers, and mitigations to be explored and the environment scanned for intuitive gaps that rationalise white-collar crime. The gaps can then, hopefully, be legally plugged.

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