"Over the last decade, many of the world's biggest companies have been embroiled in legal disputes over corruption, fraud, environmental damage, taxation issues, or sanction violations, ending either in convictions or settlements of record-breaking fines that have surpassed the billion-dollar mark. For critics of globalisation, this turn towards corporate accountability is a welcome change, showing that multinational companies are not above the law. In this book, Cornelia Woll considers how far this turn toward negotiated corporate justice, and the United States' legal action against multinationals in particular, is motivated by geopolitical and geoeconomic concerns. Woll analyses the evolution of corporate criminal prosecutions in the United States, as well as the extraterritorial expansion of its jurisdictions, and demonstrates a notable bias against foreign firms. In extreme cases, she argues, this type of legal action is used for explicitly strategic purposes to further US economic interests at home and abroad, a practice known as 'economic lawfare'. By studying the recent institutional and legal changes within a range of countries that have seen their multinational companies targeted by the threat of US prosecutions - including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Brazil - Woll draws attention to the impact of this strategy in reshaping both national legal approaches to corporate criminal law and the protocols for business government relations. No government wishes to stand accused of allowing their own multinationals to get away with illegal or unethical practices that have only come to light via US investigations, nor do they wish to see the resulting fines from any legal proceedings paid out to the US justice system alone. Woll discusses the resulting measures taken, and those still needed, to strengthen national capacity to intervene in corporate misconduct cases, and considers the extent to which certain US actions exemplify the weaponisation of interdependence by a hegemonic power"-- Provided by publisher.
"The geopolitics of American law enforcement and how it changed corporate criminal accountability in other countriesOver the past decade, many of the world's biggest companies have found themselves embroiled in legal disputes over corruption charges, fraud, environmental damage, tax evasion, or sanction violations. Corporations including Volkswagen, BP, and Credit Suisse have paid record-breaking fines. Many critics of globalization and corporate impunity cheer this turn toward accountability. Others, however, question American dominance in legal battles that seem to impose domestic legal norms beyond national boundaries. In this book, Cornelia Woll examines the politics of American corporate criminal law's extraterritorial reach. As governments abroad seek to respond to US law enforcement actions against their companies, they turn to flexible legal instruments that allow prosecutors to settle a case rather than bring it to court. With her analysis of the international and domestic politics of law enforcement targeting big business, Woll traces the rise of what she calls "negotiated corporate justice" in global markets.Woll charts the path to this shift through case studies of geopolitical tensions and accusations of "economic lawfare," pitting the United States against the European Union, China, and Japan. She then examines the reactions to the new legal landscape, describing institutional changes in the common law countries of the United Kingdom and Canada and the civil law countries of France, Brazil, and Germany. Through an insightful interdisciplinary analysis of how the prosecution of corporate crime has evolved in the twenty-first century, Woll demonstrates the profound transformation of the relationship between states and private actors in world markets, showing that law is part of economic statecraft in the connected global economy"-- Provided by publisher.
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