Corporate governance codes work only where firms believe working in a legal, ethical and transparent fashion also means good business. It is not in dispute that good corporate governance is all about commitment of a company to run its businesses in a legal, ethical and transparent manner, and that the tone must be set at the top. But are companies in India convinced that good business is all about good corporate...

Corruption kills development and is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving the globally agreed targets to reduce poverty, hunger and other social ills by 2015, also known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), United Nations officials warned today. “When public money is stolen for private gain, it means fewer resources to build schools, hospitals, roads and water treatment facilities. When foreign aid is diverted into private bank accounts, major...

Twenty-five years have passed since that night of terror and death in Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly gases explode out of a faulty tank in a pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping people. Although no official count of casualties has ever been done, estimates based on hospital and rehabilitation records show that about 20,000 people died and about 5.7 lakh suffered bodily damage, making...

Eleven months after B. Ramalinga Raju, the former chairman of Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services, confessed to masterminding a $1.2 billion Fraud at Indias fourth largest I.T. outsourcing company, the dirt is still tumbling out. On Nov. 24, the country's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) released findings that show the alleged Fraudulent accounting and embezzlement was far larger than originally thought. Raju and nine accomplices skimmed some $2.5 billion from the...

A survey reveals that desperate times have led to illegal measures THE recession has taken its toll on morals as well as profits. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting and accounting firm, has conducted a biennial survey of economic crime for the past ten years. The most recent, published on November 19th, is not only the most thorough, based on over 3,000 responses from firms in 54 countries. In many ways it is...