Amid Talk of Deregulation, Database Documents the Obama Administration's Final Offensive Against Corporate Crime

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Feb 21, 2017, 09:00 ET

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While Washington is focused on deregulation, the country's first database on corporate crime has documented the wave of cases against major companies resolved by the Obama Administration during its final weeks.

Violation Tracker, a public service of Good Jobs First's Corporate Research Project, today posted updated enforcement records showing that between Election Day and the inauguration, the Justice Department and other federal agencies obtained more than $20 billion in penalties and settlements from dozens of companies accused of a wide range of offenses involving financial, environmental, health and other harms to large numbers of people.

Violation Tracker is available at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/violation-tracker.

"Given the Trump Administration's focus on deregulation rather than enforcement, the Obama Administration's wave of case resolutions may represent Uncle Sam's last hurrah against business misconduct for some time," said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, who leads the work on Violation Tracker. "The data in Violation Tracker should give pause to those who argue for less oversight."

The recent cases include four in excess of $1 billion: Deutsche Bank ($7.2 billion), Credit Suisse ($5.3 billion), Volkswagen ($4.3 billion) and Takata ($1 billion).

Banks and other financial companies account for the largest portion of the recent cases, racking up nearly $15 billion in fines and settlements. Automotive companies are second with $5.5 billion.

Along with the recent cases, Violation Tracker now includes data from nine additional agencies, bringing the total to 39. Among the nine are the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, both of which deal with allegations of workplace discrimination.

The update also includes cases in which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration penalized companies for retaliating against employee whistleblowers. These cover situations in which workers complained about physically unsafe conditions as well as ones involving complaints about corporate financial misconduct.

With the update and coverage expansion, Violation Tracker now contains more than 120,000 entries with total penalties of more than $320 billion, most of that connected to some 2,300 large parent companies whose disparate individual entries are linked together in the database.

Individual entries include links to official online information sources. The new version of Violation Tracker supplements those with links to archival copies of sources preserved on the Good Jobs First server.

Contact: Philip Mattera 202-725-7906; [email protected]

SOURCE Good Jobs First