Corporate scandal: Bad apples or bad design of corporate environment, the case of Proton Bank

Corporate scandals during the last years have been proven to be stigmata on the corporate environment. Greece has been the focus point for its public financials, but it has its share of corporate scandals. The last thirty years a rapid reform has taken place in Greece. The legal, regulatory and capital market framework has changed in order to create a more comparable, compatible and isomorphic European business environment. Initiatives like the introduction of IFRS (2003-2004), corporate governance best practices (2002-2003), monitoring and auditing reforms, were some of the main tools of creating a new business environment in Greece. The paper argues, using specific data that these initiatives weren’t efficient enough, not by designers fault but because they weren’t appropriate for the fundamental characteristic of the social, political, legal and economic business environment of Greece. The paper, using the Proton bank case, shows these inefficiencies and highlights the fallacies of the policy makers in Greece and in Europe.