Ruth Madoff's Duty
By RANDY COHENThese are dark days for Bernard and Ruth Madoff. His Mets tickets were sold on eBay; she was banned from the Pierre Michel Salon. Through it all, this question persists: did she know about his $65 billion Ponzi scheme? Regardless of the answer, should she have? Did she have an ethical obligation to understand the source of the fortune she long enjoyed?
Here's a guideline: around the time you acquire your third house (the one in Palm Beach), you must enquire, How are we paying for this? When selecting your second yacht (Little Bull, recently seized by the courts), you must pose the question: Where is the money coming from? Having benefited from a husband's activities — for decades, not days — a spouse may not remain willfully ignorant. Adults must have some grasp of their impact upon other people, including financially. The greater your wealth, the greater your impact on others, the greater your responsibility not to be conveniently oblivious.
Marriage is a partnership. If you reap its rewards, you bear some responsibility for the way they accrue. This does not make you equally culpable for your partner's misdeeds or immune to deception, but it is does deny you the joys of spending actual loot and the comforts of ignoring that you're doing so. The Madoffs' marriage might reflect the conventions of their generation. Half a century ago, when they wed, many wives knew little about their husband's business activities (as some discovered to their lament during divorce proceedings). But it is also true that Ruth Madoff worked at her husband's company for a while and after that continued to steer customers (suckers? prey?) his way. She seems bright; she seems capable; she seems to have transferred millions of dollarsjust before his arrest. She was not entirely detached from his affairs.
There were things she might have noticed without being a forensic accountant: Bernie's preternatural consistency, for example — the way his company never seemed to go through bad times even when others did. Perhaps one evening, aloft in the private plane, while polishing her $2.6 million worth of jewels, she might have asked him, "Why is it, darling, that for 20 years your company has attracted few institutional investors, people with the savvy to probe your methods?" And if he replied with a flurry of lies? So be it: we can all be hoodwinked. But she had a responsibility at least to try to know.
A similar duty exists in law as well as ethics. One lawyer I consulted told me that "knew or should-have-known comes up a lot across the law — in the libel context, for example." (You can't just accuse someone willy-nilly of having breast implants or shooting a dog or putting breast implants into a dog.) According to another lawyer, with a background in criminal defense work, federal courts have repudiated the idea that deliberately avoiding knowledge can be used as a courtroom defense. In other words, a defendant in a gun-smuggling case can't simply claim that he had no idea what was in that package he was a paid a fat fee to carry through customs.
This stricture can be misapplied. "Should have known" — or its finger-wagging cousin, "should have known better" — can be used to browbeat the victim of wrongdoing, chiding the target of sexual harassment for failing to dress more modestly, for instance. But Ruth Madoff was not a victim of wrongdoing; she was its beneficiary.
It is not just the Madoffs and not just the wealthy who must have some awareness of the consequences of their getting and spending. All adults should have at least a rough idea of where our food comes from (Do animals suffer horribly to provide it?) and our sneakers (Are they made by children? Is the glue toxic?) and so on. This is an ethical obligation of the factory or farm owner, of any one who profits from their activities — Our cotton is picked by slaves? And they don't enjoy slavery? Lordy! — and of those who buy their products.
There are limits to how informed this last group can be. If we had to research the origins of every T-shirt before buying it, we'd be paralyzed in panic at the doors to the Gap. We rightly look to the protections erected by our community — child labor laws, environmental regulations — but we must learn enough to elect officials who will devise humane policies and to judge if they are doing so.
And if they are not? If your husband's factory dumps PCBs into the river, and town officials look the other way? You must vote those officials out (or report them to the E.P.A. or take other political action). And while you need not shoot your husband or even call the cops, you must stop spending his ill-gotten gains, stop profiting from the suffering of those he injures. Ignorance of the lout is no excuse.
It may be that for 50 years Ruth Madoff steadfastly believed she had wed an honest man. The habits of love and trust can occlude a spouse's vision, but they are not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Regardless of what is eventually established in legal proceedings — criminal, civil, bankruptcy, S.E.C. — Ruth Madoff had an ethical obligation to strive to know the source of the wealth she enjoyed.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário