Lack of Ethics : Corporate Entities and politicians need to undertake serious soul searching

With reports from UK and Switzerland over misdeeds by HSBC (and even its CE!) , and from India over the detention of a Reliance Industry Ltd employee for reportedly stealing information of a sensitive nature from the Energy Ministry's files, one wonders over the trade-off between profitability and morality.
Is it that the management which indulges in illegality or bypasses / circumvents the law has to be respected by stakeholders?
Is that company which indulges in illegal activities or abets illegal activity with intent to profit and whose shares are bought and sold by shareholders deserving of such trades in the stock market?
Do the politicians who shield the unethical corporations  on pretext of national jingoism or on  unethical considerations to be let off?
Or is it that these companies are too big to fail and therefore to be excused on each occasion to follow a criminal path later in the line?
CSR and shared value statements on the one hand and misdeeds on the other?
Can companies disown the conducts of its employees if such conduct  is for the pecuniary gain of the company, under the doctrine of indoor management?

(Both of these large corporations  have previous histories of being suspect; yet both have grown so huge that a tumble in their shares might affect stock market indices quite a bit)

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