Government eyes hotline to tackle white-collar crime

A CONFIDENTIAL hotline aimed at exposing white-collar crime, including in the banks, is among a raft of suggestions being considered in a new Government blueprint on crime.

The Department of Justice described this and another proposal — to make lawyers accountable for the advice they give to corporations — as “interesting suggestions” in terms of detecting financial abuses.

The proposals were made by interested parties and criminal justice organisations during consultations for, and in submissions to, a new white paper on crime.

These sets of proposals cover the area of organised and white-collar crime.

Department of Justice officials have put together overviews of the submissions to help with the drafting of the white paper.

A number of participants suggested a confidential phone line to combat white-collar crime, along the lines of the relatively successful Dial To Stop Drug Dealing hotline.

It was pointed out that other countries, including Britain, actively supported and encouraged whistle-blowers in relation to wrongdoing in the financial sector.

“They reported that the [UK] Serious Fraud Office has established a hotline for whistle-blowers and undertaken an advertising campaign to appeal for persons to come forward with information,” said the report.

Department officials said this was one of two interesting suggestions in trying to detect financial abuses.

“A second suggestion aimed at preventing corporate cover-ups, was the introduction of legislation regarding lawyers responsibilities and ensuring that where legal advice was sought simply to enable a party act under the cover of said legal advice, that advice-giver could be held accountable.”

Other suggestions to tackle white-collar crime include:

* Allow summary proceedings for white-collar crimes to be taken after the six-month time limit set for District Courts offences.

* Lawyers claiming legal privilege on electronic documents should have to separate their privileged material from the rest of their material.

* Have specialist juries — involving people with financial qualifications — for complex financial trials.

* Laws governing personal criminal liability for company directors are inadequate and insufficiently onerous to prove.

* Introduce “community impact statements”, akin to victim impact statements, prior to sentencing.

In relation to organised crime, one participant said it should be a criminal offence to “groom” children and young people for crime, including couriering drugs, weapons and money, as well as carrying messages, threats, and in some cases carrying out violent acts.

There was also criticism of the mandatory minimum 10-year sentence for supply drugs worth over €13,000.