Oct. 29--This is a list no company would want to be on. Scores of Illinois-based companies are included in a new report that tallied fines paid for health, safety and environmental violations over the past five years. The total: $1.87 billion.
The amount landed Illinois third in the country by dollar amount, just behind Texas and New Jersey.
The report, called Violation Tracker, is a new online database of corporate misconduct created by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that pushes for corporate and government accountability.
It tracked cases involving penalties and settlements of $5,000 or more since the beginning of 2010. The information was culled from 13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In Illinois, the report lists 994 violations at more than 100 companies.
The three biggest Illinois companies on the list are:
--Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago, which paid $1.5 billion in 2012 to settle federal and state claims that it illegally marketed the anti-seizure medication Depakote for unapproved uses.
--CF Industries. of Deerfield, which agreed to pay $175 million in 2010 in fines and financial assurances to settle violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act over hazardous wastes at a Florida chemical facility.
--Sun Coke Energy of Lisle, which paid $102 million in 2013 to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations of emission limits at the Gateway Energy and Coke plant in Granite City, Ill., and the Haverhill Coke plant in Franklin Furnace, Ohio.
Nationally, companies paid more than $60 billion in penalties in civil and criminal cases, according to the report. The largest offender is BP, which paid penalties of $25 billion, mostly relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.
Eight large corporations and their subsidiaries were each penalized more than $1 billion. Thirty-two more were penalized $100 million or more.
Good Jobs First, said it plans to track other violations, like penalties for antitrust, wage and hour violations. The report is available at violationtracker.org
"Just about every day, there is a new case of corporate malfeasance -- bribery, tax evasion, price-fixing, defrauding of government or consumers, environmental violations, unfair labor practices and much more," the report said. "Given the frequency of these scandals, it is difficult to keep track of which corporation has done what. Yet we have to try, and that is the mission of Violation Tracker."
By industry, the largest penalties were paid by companies involved in oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, utilities, automotive and chemicals.
jrussell@tribpub.com
