Bernerd J. Ebbers will surrender tomorrow to the authorities to start his long prison sentence for his role in an $11 billion WorldCom accounting fraud. Ebbers, 65, with a heart ailment is almost assured that he will never ever be able to come out alive.

The length of Ebbers’s sentence has started a debate on the American criminal justice system. His sentence for the economic crime is longer than what the leaders of a Bronx drug gangs and the don of the Gambino crime family received.

University of Missouri law professor Frank Bowman said;

That means you have to equate fiddling with the corporate books with first-degree murder or treason. My own sense is that any sentence over 20 years for anybody for an economic crime is hard to justify.

Yes indeed, when the victims of the complex crime are strewn all over and the crime is economic, does sentencing a person to such a long term in prison when he is 65, constitutes justice?

However, in my opinion, I would have no hesitation in recommending a prison sentence, but 25 years in the pen is hardly imaginable. It is at par with China’s policy of executing white-collar criminals along with drug traffickers and murderers. And, we are talking China here, a nation run by commie dictators and not US of A, the champion of fairness and democracy.

What do you say?

News and Image:Washington Post