White Collar Crime in Trinidad and Tobago. The Collapse of CL Financial Ltd

Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Criminology department), course: Criminology and Criminal Justice, language: English, abstract: The term ‘white-collar crime’ coined by Sutherland 1983 is defined as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” This discourse examines white-collar crime in Trinidad and Tobago. The study utilizes data from relevant existing documents together with the evidence provided to the Commission of Enquiry which was set up to investigate the failure of CL Financial to examine and explain of the failure of the conglomerate. Even though the final report of the Commission of Enquiry into the failure of the CL Financial group remains outstanding to date, the study revealed that white-collar crime offences as defined by criminologists did in fact occur within the conglomerate. It found that the failure of the company was primarily due to poor accounting practices, corporate malfeasances, bad investments, payment of exorbitant bonuses and wages to top employees and other minor financial infractions.