In a recent article in the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran, the editor, leapt to the defence of the recently acquitted Nortel executive team who were at the helm of that corporate behemoth when it foundered. His fawning call for the media and the public to give them a break - deserving in his view, rankled sufficiently with my take on the outcome that I sent the following comment for publication. Needless to say, the letters section the following day carried commentary more in line with his views than my note, which is reproduced below.
Terrence Corcoran's article in defence of Frank Dunn et al. is such
egregious rubbish that it hardly merits reasonable response; but it is
also misleading in many respects, and that calls for correction. The
fact that the folk he is so keen to exonerate were deemed innocent
under our criminal justice system is by no means conclusive evidence
of their innocence, but simply shows how easy it is to defeat the
system if you have enough resources to throw at it. Since I am
principally familiar with the field in which Felderhof (whose given
name happens to be John, not George) operated, I can state from
experience that he, in his dual capacities of Vice Chairman and Chief
Geologist of Bre-X, would have had to be blind, gullible, totally
incompetent, and stupid to boot, not to have been in on the scam from
the outset. His innocence in the eyes of the law proves that the law,
along with its enforcement system, is an ass. His legacy to the
profession that provided him with his livelihood until he struck it
rich is a draconian system of regulation that costs a fortune and
provides virtually no more protection to the investing public than the
one he suckered.
My point being, if I really want to hammer it home, that there is one law (or lack thereof) for the rich, and a totally different scenario for the rest of us.
