Tobacco companies exploited jurisdictional gaps for smuggling and money laundering

Evidence

In order to evade excise taxes, ingenious employees in a subsidiary of R. J. Reynolds engaged in an elaborate operation that smuggled cigarettes into Canada through an Indian reservation in New York State (Drew, 1998). … Tobacco companies ship loads of cigarettes to the tiny Caribbean island of Aruba, which is the distribution point for drug lords who launder their narcotics money through the control of cigarette sales in some parts of Latin America. In 1999 a company official absolved the tobacco companies of responsibility: “We sell to distributors. It’s not our business what they do with it” (Ronderos, 2001). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1704

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘we sell to distributors, not our business’ line is a textbook example of moral disengagement via displacement of responsibility — is this the central mechanism Bandura is demonstrating?