It’s clearly wrong to break the law. How close should you come to the limit of what is legal and what is illegal? Let’s hear from a federal prosecutor:
[I]f you are single-mindedly focused on walking the line, you are bound to end up afoul of regulators, and God forbid, criminal prosecutors. Even more dangerous perhaps, you are sending a message to every other person at the firm that line-walking is a good idea. That can work for a while, but people will invariably miscalculate and bad things will invariably follow.
– Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Second Circuit
Sources:
- MBAs and Ethics: Straddling the Line? by Louis Lavelle in Bloomberg Businessweek
- Prepared Remarks of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara June 6, 2011 (.pdf)
- Thanks to Andrew McAfee for pointing out the article
- Students Irk Prosecutor With Insider Trading Query by Eliza Ronalds-Hanson in Workforce Management
Image is Linda Crossing the Line by Ville Miettinen
