Abstract

Access was obtained to a database of securities fraud cases from the Canadian Securities Administration over a 30-year period. A total of 7,954 cases were scraped from the CSA over 1982-2017. We then took a random 20% sample and produced an SPSS file of 1,486 cases for more detailed analysis. The vast majority of offenses are for illegal capital accumulation in the form of insider trading, illegal or unregistered distributions, outright fraud, improper trading, and market manipulations – crimes of capital and the marketplace in securities. Only five (5) percent were prosecuted as criminal, and only 26 percent involved corporations. One percent resulted in some imprisonment. There was a high rate of repeat offending/multiple cases (15% of the sample), but major securities firms and banks were noticeably absent. We invoke Chambliss1–3 and Quinney4,5 to argue that these offenders are part of the detritus of the securities marketplace, for which state regulators prefer civil (fines, costs, disgorgement) and administrative sanctions over further intervention in the marketplace. The median fine was $32,000.

Keywords

corporate fraud, white-collar crime, political economy, critical theory