Global corporate crime and the Sino-Forest fraud in Canada
Global corporate crime and the Sino-Forest fraud in Canada

Summary/Abstract: Sino-Forest, formed in 1994, was a “stock market darling which promised investors a way to cash in on China's rocketing economic growth by way of a booming domestic forestry business”. The company claimed a market value of over $6 billion dollars and was Canada's largest, publicly-traded forest company. Sino-Forest's billion dollar success came to an abrupt end in June, 2011 when a short-seller investment firm specializing in Asia claimed that the company was a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Following the allegations, Sino-Forests’ stock price and bonds collapsed. As a result, Sino-Forest was forced to file for bankruptcy protection, which was granted. The company was dissolved and taken over by creditors as no buyer could be found. Several of the principles have since been charged with civil securities fraud by the Ontario Securities Commission. This paper examines the intricacies of the Sino-Forest scandal while contributing to a theoretical discussion on the role of structural holes in global capital markets. Here, we invoke Quinney analysis of capital, Chambliss4 notion of structural contradictions, and David Harvey theory of accumulation by dispossession (2004).

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