Exercise 6.1
Read the texts A and B and answer the questions:
1) Which act of wrongdoing in this unit do you think is the most serious?
2) Which do you think is the least serious?
3) Is financial wrongdoing a Victimless crime?
A. Insider dealing or insider trading:
Someone buys or sells securities using information that is not publicly available. Chinese walls are measures that you can take to stop knowledge in one department of your company being illegally used by another department, to buy or sell shares for example.
Price fixing: a group of companies in the same market secretly agree to fix prices at a certain level, so they do not have to compete with each other.
Market rigging: a group of investors work together to stop a financial market functioning as it should, to gain an advantage for themselves.
B. Fraud and embezzlement
'I'm Sam Woo. I've been a fraud squad detective for 20 years and I've seen a lot! Once, a gang counterfeited millions of banknotes in a garage. We found US$10 million in counterfeit notes. They were very good quality. Counterfeiting or forgery of banknotes was a problem, but now all the forgers are in jail. Faking luxury goods like Rolex watches was also a problem, but we're working hard to close workshops where fakes are made. There have been bad cases of fraud where someone offers to lend money, but demands that the borrower pays a "fee" before they get the loan. People can be stupid.
And there's embezzlement, a type of fraud where someone illegally gets money from their employer. One accountant sent false invoices to the company he worked for, and paid money from his company into bank accounts of false companies he had "created". He embezzled $2 million - quite a scam. There used to be a lot of racketeers demanding "protection money" from businesses. If they didn't pay, their businesses were burnt down.
Money laundering, hiding the illegal origin of money, is common - gangsters buy property with money from drugs. When they sell the property, the money becomes "legal". But banks now help by telling us when someone makes a large cash deposit.'
1. The climate in Great Britain is mild and temperate due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.
2. The weather in Britain is very changeable.
3. When they go abroad the British often surprise people of other nationalities by this tendency to talk about the weather, a topic of conversation that other people do not find so interesting.
4. The two worst months in Britain are January and February. They are cold, damp and unpleasant.
5. Yea
6. The best time of year in Britain is spring (of course, it also rains in the spring).
7. In January and February. They are cold, wet and unpleasant.
8. Most people who are looking forward to summer vacations plan to leave for the summer to summer - to France, Spain or some other place on the continent.
9. The fog spreads everywhere, it is on the streets and falls into the houses. Cars are moving slowly, but street crashes are often in the fog. People do not see each other. They sneak up at home, touching their hands, so as not to lose the road or get into the car.
10. Spring.
11. Yea.
12. Coldly.
13. Warm.
14. Yea, warm