By ones own shoelaces?

Reasonable thinking people would severely doubt the assertation by anyone who claims that they can levitate themselves off the ground by pulling on their own shoelaces. This is an obvious violation of physics, and an absolute impossibility.

Raiffeisen bank, in the light of allegations of suspicious behaviour of its top executives, conducted three separate internal / external reviews in 2016 to investigate these allegations – none of which turned up anything suspicious. Nothing to see here they claimed, move on…..Not to be sarcastic but “he who pays the piper calls the tune”.

So it was little surprise that when State Attorneys and Switzerland's banking regulator began their own scrutiny of the bank, that huge amounts of misbehaviour at Raiffeisen were brought to light.

All major corporate meltdowns over the past years, from Enron to Madoff seem to have 1 thing in common. All companies claimed to be clean and compliant by assertation’s of their own internal / external auditors, before the actual internal misbehaviour, usually by whistle-blowers, reached external independent authorities.

The economy could be better protected in that when companies try to deflect scrutiny with statements such as “we have also been conducting our own comprehensive internal investigation and will accept responsibility for any actions that fell below our high standards of ethical business conduct” that warning lights flash.

In considering our lives in a society, there’s a reason that students don’t grade their own papers, or write their own exam questions, there is a reason that there is no allowance to give ourselves parking fines,  there’s a reason criminal defendants don’t stand in judgement of themselves, or sentence themselves to a penalty of their choosing. It would be amazing if we could award ourselves whatever pay raised we like, or promote ourselves to a job of our own choosing.

In short, oversight and compliance need to be assessed by independent outside entities as companies obviously are concerned, by whatever means possible, to suppress and deflect whatever misbehavior they are accused of.