https://www.yahoo.com/news/victims-vietnam-tycoons-record-scam-134515985.html

The Saigon Commercial Bank was in all ways observable to a citizen of that nation a legitimate banking institution where you could deposit your money safely and find high quality investment opportunities. In was in fact, an organization devoted toward plunder and theft.

It is likely that more than 40,000 citizens of the nation became victims of the scam. In a nation where salaries are small and social services relatively narrow, the damage done is multiplied. At the moment, the total losses appear to be 12.5 billion dollars if it were measured in American currency.

So, what is the relevance for me a business ethics expert? First, it illustrates the stark difference between a mature financial process in a nation like the United States and the youthful, early development phase of banking in a relatively newly organized nation. Getting clobbered by the 1929 Great Depression may be a terrible tragedy but if some if only a few of the lessons learned can be placed into law, great organized thefts like this one can usually be avoided.

And it is another argument for the importance and desperate need for widespread and thorough teaching about business ethics particularly with attention to how the public has been killed, injured and stolen from throughout history and continuing today.

I suspect there are those that feel that regulation is unnecessary. Businesses afraid of negative publicity will be more careful. That is nonsense. The urge to steal and kill is still here among us and a surprising willingness to risk the lives of hundreds of people over a few thousand dollars profit never fails to surprise me. There was this vat load of ice cream that should have been thrown away but wasn’t. That kind of food poisoning most usually kills small children and the elderly. Four elderly died in a hospital and since, we know their diet in detail the culprit ice cream was identified. How many other people did they kill? We’ll never know.

A quick look at today’s headlines reveals the following problems in business ethics: sex trafficking (this was a CEO), a massive discharge of pollutants in the Amazon, the backlash to AI, the current deaths in the United States due to E. Coli and the listeria contamination crisis currently ongoing.

Business ethics has never been more relevant.

James Alan Pilant