Management fraud insurance
Equity investors can now buy insurance to protect themselves against steep share-price falls that have been caused by alleged management fraud à la Steinhoff.
After I watched yet another gangster movie on TV, I still haven’t figured out what the prize is for the kingpin, the godfather, the most feared gangster in the world. The endgame is predictable. Yet they keep coming, and there are recurring themes.
At the core is a thirst for money and power that can never be quenched, stereotypically sought by those who started with little of either.
Every gangster has a lovely, if not doting, mother. She still lives in the same house in the old neighbourhood, goes to church regularly and cooks a fabulous dinner. Sons are always welcome at home, even though they slaughter other humans for the price of a fix, for disobedience to the code or just for show. “Johnny is still my little boy, a nice kid.”
In these neighbourhood origins of the billionaire-to-be drug dealer, there are street codes more powerful than the rule of law that you dare not break. Codes governing loyalty, family, brutality, revenge, rites of passage (that sort of stuff) which found alliances between brothers of the hood; alliances that can later be relied on as the bond of handshakes that seal weapons trafficking that will kill thousands, whatever the cause being fought.
Villains have siblings born or raised in the same house who don’t always want to follow the same career path, but everyone is at risk.
The road to glory is well understood. Hierarchy is sacrosanct and you must learn the ropes (or other weapon of choice) before you can be promoted. Everyone starts off as some sort of intermediary, delivering either goods or messages to someone higher up in the organisation.
To leapfrog out of this drudgery, to sit in the back of the car or the front of the bar, or to get a gun, you must do something illegal — the more vicious, the better.
Killing one of the opposing cartel members in cold blood, in the parking lot of a top country club, in brazen daylight, with a couple of witnesses, could do your CV the world of good.
A straight bullet to the head would suffice, but a more ruthless bludgeoning to death with a blunt object might get you a few more rungs up the ladder.
Leaders at the top of the pile sometimes do the dirty work themselves, not so much to get it done but to reset the standard of brutality for the aspiring young killers down the chain of command. A massacre, for instance, with an automatic assault weapon, in that same car park, would do wonders for your promotion possibilities, as would something more intimate, like cutting off a thumb with that trusted old pen-knife your late father gave you for your birthday or putting some drain-cleaning fluid to good use.
It is not possible to get away with this criminal, cruel behaviour, on such a broad scale, without some institutional support. Law-enforcement agents get involved and get tempted. They, too, have a hierarchy, often correlated with the level of criminals they’ve busted. If you limit yourself to pickpockets and shoplifters, you’re not going to make detective.
The worlds of the law breakers and law makers intersect. Informants, or criminals looking to cut a plea bargain, are the ultimate sources for the big busts.
Lines become blurred and the different risk-reward equations simply don’t tally. They are not even measured in the same currency. The best players on both sides are not that different. To win wars you must fight as dirtily as your opponent does. The end justifies the means. Before you know it you’re caught in a stream and it’s impossible to get out.
When you’re public enemy number one, when you’re top of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list and at the pinnacle of your “career”, what have you got?
Surrounded by bodyguards you spend your latter years in hiding. Your prize is measured by all the sex, booze and drugs money can buy, but it’ll never be enough, and sufficient doses are, in any case, available to ordinary men. More likely, a rival will kill you, or you will spend the last of your allocated years in a topsecurity prison, feared by a few but alone.
Crime, and the corruption that abides it, doesn’t pay. You can’t check out once you join in, and the marginal utility of money diminishes sooner than you think.
And, anyway, money isn’t power. Don’t start.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO GET AWAY WITH THIS CRIMINAL, CRUEL BEHAVIOUR WITHOUT SOME INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT TO WIN WARS YOU MUST FIGHT AS DIRTILY AS YOUR OPPONENT DOES. THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS