Bloomberg Law
Aug. 29, 2016, 12:19 PM UTC

Why They Did It: Madoff and Enron’s Fastow Explain the Biggest Frauds in U.S. History

Bloomberg Media

By Paul Barrett, BloombergBusinessweek

Why do business executives — people who already possess status and wealth — commit financial crimes?

Eugene Soltes offers some interesting theories in his new book, Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal , including the notion that many senior business people operate in a moral “gray zone.” An associate professor at Harvard Business School, Soltes posits that they step over the line—breaking accounting rules or making illegal insider trades—in part because they rely on intuition. And, it turns out, their instincts stink.

More compelling than his analytical efforts, the author’s ...

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