Dual Control of Corporations and the Lead Abroad

Government is a structure that governs society. It can be considered as a legal body of the society, which enacts the laws and rules for the society under it. A government is usually the group or organization of individuals governing an independent state, usually a country. In other words, the government consists of elected leaders who form an organism called legislature. Government bodies are accountable to the voters through a constitutive assembly.

Although there is a division between state and federal government, the ultimate decision making power lies with the federal government. Federal government possesses many legislative and executive branches. The most prominent of these branches are U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. There exist separate U.S. office of special concerns, like the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), Office of White House Counsel (WHC), and Office of Government Ethics (OGE).

One important aspect of the governance structure of government is that it possesses several distinct bodies that enjoy dual accountability. These bodies are the courts, congressional oversight, regulatory agencies, secretaries, and Inspectors General. Some governments have incorporated some combination of these into a single governing body known as a government corporation. However, many nations have retained the separate identities of the traditional agencies while incorporating the oversight of corporate bodies such as the Office of the Secretary of State or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

One notable exception to this is Australia, which has an executive and a judicial branch. Australia’s two most powerful branches, the Office of the Governor-General and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, have extensive statutory powers of jurisdiction over the corporations and public law. The main difference between these two bodies is that the OAG lacks the statutory powers of the AG. The AG has overall authority over all matters affecting the boards and commissions of the state, and the SIC lacks statutory powers of its own. This is one of the main differences between the traditional executive and regulatory agencies of a modern nation.

The corporate veil of government corporations also adds another layer of complication in the regulation of corporations. The original draft of the US SOX Statute contained an exemption for corporations that were international or resident for tax purposes. This was later changed to provide the executive branch with jurisdiction over domestic corporations. In effect, the government could now tax domestically corporations under its existing sovereign powers without the need to go through the costly and time consuming international approval process. While not every country permits the taxing of corporations, many multinational companies are able to bypass the needed approvals via the use of offshore jurisdictions.

The trend of increasing regulatory and supervisory oversight of corporations has been further accentuated by the growth of the regulatory state within each nation. Superintendents and senior management regularly serve as direct representatives of both the OAG and the AG. They are accountable to the leaders of both branches and are charged with faithfully carrying out their respective roles. The increased oversight provides the executive branch with a much more powerful position of control over the corporations that fund and regulate them.