Abstract
This paper insists on the importance of the guilt consciousness as the cause of ecomomic crime. For this purpose, the author considers the reasons of the problem of guarantee for returns in "brokerage scandal" case in Japan, especially focusing on interorganizational relations between the Finance Ministry and the securities industry as a cause of the weakness of the guilt consciousness. The securities department of the Finance Ministry has two purposes to control securities business: maintaining of the fairness of the market trade and supporting of the companies. With the Securities and Exchange Law, the department has authority to control the securities business by "gyosei-shido (administrative guidance)." So, new companies without license from the department can not enter the securities market. Moreover, the fee for trading securities is fixed by the department. As a result, the market is not competitive and the securities companies can gain excess profits. The companies want to maintain trading contracts with big customers, which is the source of excess profits. Then, they illegally guarantee for returns to maintain the contracts. This is the economic reason of the illegal guarantee. But, it is imposible to explain the illegal guarantee without other factors. That is the weakness of guilt consciousness. There are frequent interactions between the department and the companies for gyosei-shido. Combined with other factors, the interactions lead the department to prefer supporting the companies to maintaining the fairness, and to tolerate the deviance from the Law. As a result, companies don't consider the deviance as a crime, and illegally make contracts of trading securities with big customers accompanied by guarantee for returns. The intimate interorganizational relations between the department of the Finance Ministry and the securities industry cause these two reasons of the crime: paralysis of guilt consciousness and increase of economic motivation. Both factors are necessary to explain the economic crime such as brokerage scandal.
